IL18 and systemic lupus erythematosus: Because the autophagy mechanism seems to play a role in determining the release of IL-1 family cytokines such as IL-18 [25], and IL-18 was recently considered to play a role in some clinical manifestations of SLE [20], we evaluated the circulating levels of this cytokine in sera and the expression levels in PBMCs’ lysates from patients with SLE before and after 2, 4, and 12 weeks of treatment with BLM.