Trying to Shut Off the Body's Friendly Fire

NY Times ^ | June 5, 2005 | ANDREW POLLACK

[neverdem]

ROXANNE PEREZ had never really been sick in her life until, at age 27, the roof began falling in. During a Fourth of July weekend at the beach in 2000, she was rushed to an emergency room suffering from convulsions. In the months after, she had blood transfusions and her spleen removed. Then, in 2001, she suffered a heart attack that left her heart permanently weakened.

Ms. Perez, who lives in San Antonio, had to give up her job, her home and car and move in with her parents. Now 32, she suffers from frequent fatigue, made worse when she goes out in the sun, and takes 25 different drugs. She said she could never have children.

"I was at the prime of my life and it's like a bomb fell on me," she said.

The attack was the physiological equivalent of friendly fire. Ms. Perez has lupus and hemolytic anemia. Both are autoimmune diseases, in which the person's immune system, meant to defend against germs, instead directs its fury against the person's own tissues.

There are at least 80 autoimmune diseases, ranging from familiar ones like rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis and Type 1 diabetes to more obscure ones like pemphigus vulgaris. They affect 5 to 8 percent of the American population, or up to 23.5 million people, say estimates from the National Institutes of Health. Patient advocacy groups often give much higher estimates, and there is evidence that the incidence of some of the diseases is increasing.

Most of the victims are women - many, like Ms. Perez, in their childbearing years. There are at least eight women for every man who has lupus, scleroderma, thyroiditis and Sjogren's syndrome. Women also outnumber men, though not by as large a margin, for multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel...

[neverdem]

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list. On a more optimistic note, you may want to check They Did It!!! "Scientists Free Mars Rover From Sand Dune".

[xJones]

The myriad autoimmune diseases can often take a long time to diagnose officially to where any medical insurance will pay for the often very expensive prescriptions. A good friend of mine has been suffering the last 11 months from daily low-grade fever, terrible fatigue, frequent memory loss, etc., and the doctors are convinced it is due to a specific autoimmune disease that can take years to build up enough that it shows up in blood tests.

It runs in her family, among the last 12 female descendants of her material grandmother, 6 have been diagnosed so far with an autoimmune disease and my friend's mother died from one.

[Nov3]

The recent spate of autoimmune diseases and their cause has yet to explained.

[Donald Meaker]

In terms of evolutionary biology, it is easy. Weaknesses are normally part of the process, and the environment ruthlessly screens out the weak. If you don't let that happen, you will have a larger number of weak individuals.

Kind of like glasses. I wear them, but a few hundred years i could perhaps be a jeweler. Maybe.

Instead, I make a good living.

[olde north church]

The recent spate of autoimmune diseases and their cause has yet to explained.
I'll 'splain it. It's easy to explain, people just don't want to hear it. The emporer has no clothes. At the turn of the 20th century, the average human lifespan was about 40 years. 27 years old was about the time people were starting to wind down.
People are simply living too long. These illnessess, conditions, whatever you want to call them are occurring AFTER the normal human breeding period, not before -- well Lupus is a borderline situation as teen girls can get it in their teens.
If these occurred before breeding age, they most likely would have been bred out of the normal human experience. Isn't it something though, that royalty, along with there incidence of inbreeding follies are often among the most long lived in a society. It's either one end of the spectrum or the other, feast or famine.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

In terms of evolutionary biology, it is easy. Weaknesses are normally part of the process, and the environment ruthlessly screens out the weak. If you don't let that happen, you will have a larger number of weak individuals.

Thank goodness we as a society are too civilized to engage in such ruthlessness toward the weak. I'm glad we don't "let that happen," as you put it.

[Blumtoon]

I would not have survived long in a primitive society with my bad eyesight and slenderness. Either famine or a large animal I wouldn't have seen till it was too late would have got me.

[clyde asbury]

At the turn of the 20th century, the average human lifespan was about 40 years.

Yes, in the past the average human lifespan was much shorter than today.

But, the average person was certainly not winding down at 27 in 1905. The infant mortality rate was much higher than today, and this pulled the average down. It was not uncommon for those who survived into adulthood to live into their 60s and 70s - much like today.

Today is different, though, in that we have many more living into their 90s and beyond.

[Nov3]

Sorry, it doesn't begin to explain the spate that has occurred since 1985 or so. There is something dietary or environmental that has changed. The gene pool has not changed appreciably. For that matter it has not changed appreciably in 100,000 years.

[Nov3]

In terms of evolution a 50,000 or 100,000 years is a blink of an eye. The change cannot be explained by that.

[olde north church]

In terms of evolution a 50,000 or 100,000 years is a blink of an eye. The change cannot be explained by that.
1. That is if you believe in linear evolution, a perfect route to extinction, time after time after time. Punctuated equilibrium is much more likely.
2. Homo sapiens sapiens has been around for only about 50,000, if that.

[slowhandluke]

The recent spate of autoimmune diseases and their cause has yet to explained.

There are explanations, see here, but they aren't widely accepted yet. This particular explanation is that most things considered auto-immune, are an infection of the immune system itself, by bugs that are heard to detect.

There are several forms of bacteria and mycoplasma that can shed their cell walls, and go into a spore-like form that is very slow growing and small enough that they can't be seen by visible microscopy, and are also too small to be filtered out of vaccines, and aren't killed by chorination or floridation. One of the things that can provoke these organisms to go into CWD form is the use of beta-lactam antibiotics like penicillin which attack the cell wall of bacteria.

Why some people fight off this infection and others don't isn't explained yet.

The good news is that this particular explanation is not just a guess, but based on solid research, and has provided a therapy that works.

That last phrase is based on personal experience with sarcoid.

[Nov3]

OK there has been a giant evolutionary leap in the past 90 or so years.

[meatloaf]

There may be a reason that generations have been affected starting with the maternal grandmother.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/227013_toxics03.html

[meatloaf]

Luke would you post the link about sarcoid again please?

[NittanyLion]

My mom has lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. With proper treatment, most people can live a productive life and keep the pain in check. That said, her pain during flare-ups can be extreme.

The recent debate over Cox-2 inhibitors made me angry - there are folks who need those drugs just so they can hold a job, and would happily assume the very slight additional risk of taking them. Yet the media whips up hysteria, lawyers begin salivating at the potential jury awards, and the products end up pulled from the shelves. It's quite maddening.

[xJones]

Thanks, FRiend, for #15, I'll pass that link on.

[bushisforpeace]

Except that for the first time in human history almost all women survive childbirth and almost all babies survive infancy. Three of my grandmother’s seven siblings survived to adulthood (and then very old age). My grandmother's siblings died of diarrhea as infants or toddlers. My husband’s grandmother’s family’s experience was similar, a sister and a brother died before they were two, apparently of pneumonia ,and a brother passed as a teenager because he “didn't sweat.”

Those grandmothers had a grandson who suffered from illnesses twice during infancy that would have taken him in their day. The grandson was hospitalized three times as a baby. The first time he was on a respirator for RSV pneumonia, a serious illness for which there is no vaccine. The second time was for treatment Rotaviurs. Rotavrius is a diarrheal illness that even today is a killer in the third world. Without IV fluids, there is no doubt at all that Rotavirus would have killed that lucky boy.

If you met the 14 year old grandson today he would appear indistinguishable from any other boy his age. But he is different, to control his asthma (an autoimmune disease) he requires daily medication, his skin occasionally develops serious infections which require antibiotics and when he gets sick he gets very sick.

What cause the boy’s asthma? His survival. That’s what’s different now. We are living on a spot in human history which has never been enjoyed before.

[bushisforpeace]

Except that for the first time in human history almost all women survive childbirth and almost all babies survive infancy. Three of my grandmother’s seven siblings survived to adulthood (and then very old age). My grandmother's siblings died of diarrhea as infants or toddlers. My husband’s grandmother’s family’s experience was similar, a sister and a brother died before they were two, apparently of pneumonia ,and a brother passed as a teenager because he “didn't sweat.”

Those grandmothers had a grandson who suffered from illnesses twice during infancy that would have taken him in their day. The grandson was hospitalized three times as a baby. The first time he was on a respirator for RSV pneumonia, a serious illness for which there is no vaccine. The second time was for treatment Rotaviurs. Rotavrius is a diarrheal illness that even today is a killer in the third world. Without IV fluids, there is no doubt at all that Rotavirus would have killed that lucky boy.

If you met the 14 year old grandson today he would appear indistinguishable from any other boy his age. But he is different, to control his asthma (an autoimmune disease) he requires daily medication, his skin occasionally develops serious infections which require antibiotics and when he gets sick he gets very sick.

What cause the boy’s asthma? His survival. That’s what’s different now. We are living on a spot in human history which has never been enjoyed before.