Autoimmune

New insight into autoimmune disease: Bacterial infections promote recognition of self-glycolipids

The immune system is a complex and powerful weapon that provides protection against bacteria and viruses that, if left unchecked, would wreak havoc throughout the human body. The ability of the immune system to recognize the body's own tissues is essential, but sometimes the immune system loses the ability to distinguish "self" from potentially harmful invaders. This can lead to autoimmune diseas...

Immune system has evolved to prevent autoimmune disease

Study suggests chronic infections may create autoimmune response New research finds the human immune system has foregone evolutionary changes that would allow it to produce better antibodies in less time because the improved antibodies would be far more likely to attack the body's own tissues. The Rice University study finds the immune system has evolved a near-perfect balance for produci...

Dendritic cells offer new therapeutic target for drugs to treat MS and other autoimmune disease

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have found that a gene pathway linked to a deadly form of leukemia may provide a new way to treat autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis. Their tests in cell cultures and mice suggest that blocking the pathway by interfering with a blood cell growth gene, known as FLT3, targets an immune system cell often ignored in favor of T-cell t...

Mystery solved: Gold's power against autoimmune diseases defined

Gold compounds have been used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases for more than 75 years, but until now, how the metals work has been a mystery. Harvard Medical School researchers report in the Feb. 27 issue of Nature Chemical Biology that special forms of gold, platinum, and other classes of medicinal metals work by stripping bacteria and virus particles from...

New pathways for autoimmune treatment identified

A rare genetic defect that can trigger a host of diseases from type 1 diabetes to alopecia has helped explain the imbalance of immune regulator and killer cells in autoimmune disease. Mutation in the Aire gene causes APS1, a disease causing two out of three problems ?an underactive parathyroid, yeast infection of the skin and/or mucous membrane and adrenal gland insufficiency ?by age 5 an...

Scientists stop autoimmune disease without shutting off immune system

Skin is our first line of defense against infection. But people with a rare, life-threatening autoimmune disease called pemphigus vulgaris lack that protection because their immune system attacks the proteins that hold skin cells together. They develop severe blisters and raw sores as the top layer of their skin falls apart, leaving them extremely vulnerable to infection. The development...

Finding paves way for better treatment of autoimmune disease

A signaling molecule with an affinity for alcohol has yielded a rapid, inexpensive way to make large numbers of immune cells that work like beat cops keeping misguided cells from attacking the body. The ability to easily make large numbers of these cells opens the door to improved treatment and a better understanding of autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and arthritis, Medical Co...

Prevention is the best option: fighting autoimmune diseases

Centenary scientist Associate Professor Barbara Fazekas de St. Groth, a leader in inflammatory bowel disease research, has demonstrated for the firsttime the important role of T cells in the prevention of autoimmune diseases in humans. In a study involving 38 patients with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, the two common forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and 43 healthy contr...

Autoimmune disease triggered if T cells miss a single protein early on

Scientists have discovered that autoimmunity can be triggered in the thymus, where the immune system's T cells develop, if T cells fail to recognize just one of the body's thousands of proteins as "self." The research confirms an emerging view that autoimmunity can start in this cradle of the immune system, and not only at the sites where autoimmune diseases emerge, such as the pancreas in the c...

Cracking open the black box of autoimmune disease

Autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis occur when the immune system fails to regulate itself. But researchers have not known precisely where the molecular breakdowns responsible for such failures occur. Now, a team of scientists from the Whitehead Institute and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified a key set of genes that lie at the core of autoimmu...

Cytomegalovirus exacerbates atherosclerosis through an autoimmune mechanism

Atherosclerosis is the main cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Classic risk factors including smoking, diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol levels are known...