Lupus dermal fibroblasts hyper-respond to inflammatory cytokines and exhibit a pro-fibrotic phenotype to TGF-β in patients with scarring skin disease

we examined responses to cytokines in dermal fibroblasts from the skin of SLE patients with CLE and healthy control volunteers to identify the inflammatory phenotype and gene expression profile associated with SLE and scarring CLE lesions. we first compared the inflammatory phenotype in fibroblasts isolated from healthy controls (HC) and from non-lesional skin of SLE patients with CLE to explore differences in gene expression that occur in the disease