Role of drugs and environmental agents in lupus syndromes.

It is increasingly accepted that a broad range of drugs and environmental factors can give rise to lupus syndromes and other types of connective tissue disease syndromes. This chapter reviews the drugs and environmental agents reported during this past year. Considerable research efforts are now focused on understanding the possible mechanisms, particular specificities of the antibody responses, new patterns of antibody responses, and biochemical pathways. These potentially important contributors to the expression of disease are reviewed.