Can a "Living Drug" Cure Autoimmune Diseases?

[Nevilledog]

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/can-a-living-drug-cure-autoimmune-diseases

No paywall link
https://archive.li/DR4LJ

When Talaya Reid was in high school, in a quiet suburb of Philadelphia, she developed fatigue so severe that she spent afternoons napping instead of going out with friends. She was lethargic at school and her grades suffered, but after graduation she enrolled in community college, where she did well enough to transfer to Temple University. Then, in the summer of 2017, when Reid was twenty-one, she noticed a rash on her face after a day at the beach. Her doctor dismissed it as nothing serious. The rash persisted, so she sought care from a dermatologist, who raised a more ominous possibility: lupus, a disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the skin, joints, and internal organs. Blood tests confirmed the diagnosis.

Reid didn’t notice any other symptoms until, a few months later, she awoke with a searing pain in her abdomen. She drove to the E.R., where doctors found protein in her urine—a sign that lupus was affecting her kidneys. She spent eleven days in the hospital being pumped full of medications; by the time she was ready to go home, her body was engorged with twenty pounds of extra fluid, a result of her kidney disease and the steroids used to treat it. Her friends had always known her for her taste in fashion, but now she couldn’t fit into her clothes. “My feet were so swollen, I had to buy shoes two sizes bigger,” she told me.

Lupus, which afflicts some five million people worldwide, is a leading cause of death among young women. Doctors had little to offer Reid beyond steroids, which reduce inflammation but can cause bone fractures and diabetes, and a select few immunosuppressant drugs, which expose patients to infections and often fail to halt the disease’s progression. During a medical leave of absence from school, Reid’s hair fell out in fist-sized clumps. The rash on her face left behind scars when it healed. Her joints ached, and her legs were frequently taut with fluid. Throughout college, Reid’s medications provided fleeting relief, followed by relapses that left her bedridden at home. “During the times when my flares were really bad, I’d ask my mom, ‘Can you just lay here with me until I fall asleep?’ ” Reid told me. “Then she could call 911 in case I stopped breathing.”

Reid’s lowest point came in early 2023, when she received an infusion of yet another medication. She, her mother, and her father listened as her nephrologist, Abdallah Geara, explained that her kidneys were still leaking protein. She would eventually need dialysis. “I remember my parents and doctor just kind of pleading with me to keep going,” she told me. “We were all in tears.”

*snip*