To further explore the activation levels of the pathway in these two groups of people, we compared the CpG effects on the production of PDGF-B in healthy controls and SLE patients; it was found that blood cells of SLE patients did produce much higher levels of TGF-β1 and PDGF-B than those of healthy controls. Here, TGFB1 is linked to systemic lupus erythematosus.