Active clinical trials for "Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic"

The goal of this study is to enable the study sponsor to develop a new blood test method for clinicians to accurately predict which individuals with lupus will flare, when the flare will occur, and flare severity. Ultimately such a newly derived test would allow treating physicians to start pre-emptive therapy early, with the goal of achieving remission quickly and with a shorter duration of treatment; identify individuals who will have less severe flares and will thus require less aggressive treatments; or intensify and lengthen treatment for those individuals who will need such therapy. The design of this study is to follow individuals with a known diagnosis of SLE for changes in disease activity during the course of one year of observation. Clinical data and blood and urine samples will be collected at scheduled monthly visits. The clinical data and blood samples will be used for identifying gene expression profile(s) that are associated with increases in SLE disease activity (lupus "flares").

In daily clinical use, pulse high dosis corticosteroids are used to treat cerebral edema in different pathological situations ( surgery, trauma, tumors...). Dehydration can theorically concern extra-cellular or intracellular water, or both. The relative proportion of those two components are not known, as well their kinetics. Diffusion Weighted Imaging ( DWI) is a none invasive and none toxic technique to study those phenomena.We can also study the diffusivity anisotropy not using a Gaussian distribution but rather a non- gaussian one, more close to the reality ( q Space Imaging ). Finally, we can study the compartment redistribution between slow and rapid water molecules diffusion by bi-exponential decomposition of the diffusion signal, corresponding, theorically, respectively to the intra- and extra-cellular component. Hypothesis : The high dosis steroid pulse therapy modifies or not the water free diffusion in DWI and qSI ? Is there a modification in the diffusivity of both rapid and slow component ?