Let me tell you, folks, we’ve got something incredible here. We’re talking about young people, beautiful young people, suffering from this thing called juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus, j-SLE, with these tough neuropsychiatric symptoms. It’s tough, really tough. But here’s the thing, there’s been no way to really see what’s going on inside their brains. Until now. We’ve got this amazing technology, PET-FDG, and it’s doing something fantastic.

We took a look at 11 of these brave kids, ages 11 to 18, who’ve been dealing with this for no more than 18 months. And they weren’t even sedated for this, can you believe it? They went through this PET-MRI system, and what we found was astonishing. We’re seeing things that we couldn’t see before. These kids, they’ve got these metabolic dysfunctions, and we’re finally catching them in the act, thanks to PET-FDG.

Now, the doctors, they looked at these images, and at first, they saw some things, but when they used this special analysis, boom, they saw even more. We’re talking about areas in the brain lighting up like never before, showing us exactly where the problem is. And guess what? It’s mostly in these areas called the thalamus and subthalamic brainstem. It’s like finding the secret hideout of the bad guys in their brains.

And here’s the kicker: the worse the symptoms, the more these areas light up. It’s like the brain is sending us a signal, saying, “Here’s the problem!” But we need more studies, bigger ones, to really nail this down as the way to spot this lupus thing in these young heroes.

So, to sum it up: we’ve got this groundbreaking way to peek inside the brains of these kids suffering from j-SLE with neuropsychiatric symptoms. And it’s showing us things we’ve never seen before. It’s huge, folks. We’re on the brink of something big, something that could change lives. But we’ve got to keep pushing, keep studying, to make sure we can use this to really help these kids. It’s going to be great.