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Environmental agents such as infections, sun exposure and others that cause oxidative stress can epigenetically alter the immune system to cause flares of lupus in genetically predisposed people.How the environment modifies the immune system to cause lupus flares though, is unclear.Early studies demonstrated that CD4+ T cells treated with DNA methylation inhibitors are sufficient to cause lupus-like autoimmunity in mice, and that similar epigenetic changes are found in T cells from patients with active lupus.