The levels of plasma S100 proteins effectively discriminated between SLE patients and healthy controls, with an AUC of 0.989, 0.678 and 0.807 for plasma levels of S100A4, S100A8/9 and S100A12, respectively, indicating that S100A4 may be a potential diagnostic biomarker for SLE (23). Here, S100A4 is linked to systemic lupus erythematosus.