The choroid plexus and system disease in mental illness. II. Systemic lupus erythematosus: a combined transport...

Carr et al. (1978) and Rudin (1979) independently suggested tat systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) might provide a model for schizophrenia since SLE is strongly associated with schizophreniform psychoses and exhibits only a covert CNS pathology revealed by immunofluorescent immune complex deposits in the choroid plexus. To carry the concept forward we here examine SLE employing the ideas developed in the preceding paper (Rudin, 1980) indicating that the choroid plexus is part of a second blood-brain barrier guarding the periventricular primary personality brain, the limbic system, and that the choroid plexus is also but one of a set of "transport organs" sharing common vulnerability to covert basal lamina immune complex pathology. In this context both SLE and schizophrenia are viewed as expressions of combined transport dysfunction syndromes, resulting from polygenic-induced sensitivity to exogenous peptides or viruses causing basal laminar immune complex disease, but exhibiting differing statistical expressions over the transport organ group due to difference in genes which elicit different transport organ sensitivities to different exogenous viruses or peptide antigens. Immune disease processes are briefly reviewed.