The importance of DNA hypomethylation in lupus was supported by the findings that demethylation of normal human and murine CD4+ T cells with a specific DNA methylation inhibitor induced auto-reactivity in these cells, and deliberate adoptive transfer of demethylated CD4+ T cells into syngeneic recipient mice induced lupus-like disease [11]. Here, CD4 is linked to systemic lupus erythematosus.