Antilymphocyte antibodies in systemic lupus erythematosus: familial clustering of lymphocyte antigens.

Cold reactive lymphocytotoxic sera from patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and their relatives were found to react with lymphocyte antigens that cluster in normal families. These antigens do not correlate with HLA-A or -B antigens in families, suggesting that they are not related to Ir genes. Further work is indicated to determine whether these antigens are controlled by several genes or involve viral products on the cell surface.