As part of the annual meeting of American College of Rheumatology (ACR) in Boston, USA, PhD-Candidate/LIS-doctor Maria Boge Lauvsnes was awarded the Sjögren’s Syndrome Foundation’s Outstanding Abstract Award. Through her work – Hippocampal Atrophy Is Associated with Anti-NR2 Antibodies in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and Primary Sjögren’s Syndrome – she has shown that a type of anti-NMDA receptor antibodies (anti-NR2 antibodies) cause atrophy of the brain structure hippocampus in humans with the immunological diseases SLE and primary Sjögren’s syndrome. This has been confirmed in animal models, which have revealed that anti-NR2 antibodies cause neuronal death of hippocampus in mice.

Such antibodies are associated with cognitive failure in both SLE and primary Sjögren’s syndrome, and they may constitute a general mechanism for cerebral affection with immunopathies.

Maria Boge Lauvsnes works for the Clinical Immunological Research Group at Stavanger University Hospital