Roberto Assandri, Marta Monari, Alessandro Montanelli
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a autoimmune disorder with unpredictable course that involves polyclonal autoimmunity against multiple autoantigens and presents a broad spectrum of clinical manifestations (fever, skin rashes, arthralgia, inflammation of kidney, lungs, or brain). The pathogenesis of SLE is based on a combinations of genetic variants and environmental factor that promote loss-of-tolerance or tissue inflammation. In fact there is growing evidence to suggest that inflammation and related molecules plays a key role in the pathogenesis of SLE. The pentraxin superfamily (PTXs), divided into long and short PTXs, can induce by and a variety of inflammation-associated stimuli. Alongside the classical short pentraxins C-reactive protein (CRP) and serum amyloid P component (SAP), pentraxin 3 ( PTX3) is a prototypic of long pentraxin family, a multifunctional protein characterized by a cyclic multimeric structure and a conserved domain
