[Nature's healing power--natural selection in protein turnover].

For millennia, medical practitioners, healthy people and the sick have known that there is an inner force that keeps us sound and also cures us. However, neither medicine nor natural sciences have been able to define this curative power. It can not be captured by experiments or assigned with dimensions or numbers.

Maintaining life and health by natural selection of protein molecules.

A concept for a life and health-preserving principle is presented, with reference to evolutionary, medical, and biochemical observations. Life comprises two basic phenomena: it unfolds over longer periods at the population level, and is sustained for the duration of individual life spans. The evolution of life within populations by means of natural selection of individuals is central to Darwin's theory of evolution.

Antibodies to dsDNA: failure to detect antigenic determinants specific for superhelical B-DNA.

IgG antibodies of SLE sera were tested for their reactivity with SV40 DNA in superhelical, open circular and linear conformations. In binding and competition studies with 12 IgG dsDNA positive sera we could not demonstrate antibodies reacting with antigenic sites specific for superhelical structures of DNA, nor did we find Z-DNA antibodies reacting with superhelical SV40 DNA.

[Histone antibodies: significance in the diagnosis of SLE in comparison to dsDNA antibodies and antibodies to extractable nuclear antigens].

Antibodies to histones of the IgG-class are specific for SLE and can be shown in 23% of the sera. They are not associated with clinical symptoms of SLE, but with dsDNA-antibodies.

Antibodies to histones of the IgG and IgM class in systemic lupus erythematosus.

Antibodies to histones were measured by an ELISA. Histone antibodies of the IgM class could be detected in other diseases than SLE, as well as in healthy persons. However, IgG histone antibodies proved to be specific for SLE and could be found in 21% of the SLE patients.