Oh wow as a 40 year type 1 just identifing the gene could lead to much better treatments and/or cure.
autoimmune disorders run in my family. I am very happy to hear of this.
Interesting. I had (pediatric?) nephrotic syndrome, my Aunt had kidney problems, my sister and I both have had episodes of alopecia areata, and I currently have bouts of eczema.
Hopefully this research can lead to a cure because supposedly there may be a link with nephrotic syndrome at a young age and lupus at an older age.
sfl
Ping....(Thanks, neverdem!)
HEALTH PING
Gene who?
Gene Siskel I would believe.
“In 24 of 923 people with conditions such as Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and multiple sclerosis, the gene was present in a variant form.”
That’s not very compelling evidence!
Thanks.
p.s., ND, what does your tagline mean?
There is a strong possibility that a lot of autoimmune diseases have a similar cause, and a strange one: a lack of parasites in the body.
The logic is that for millenia, humans have had to contend with a huge assortment of parasites, and so our immune systems adapted to resist them. But in their absence, the immune system is prone to false alarms, which turn it against the body.
The first big breakthrough happened in Germany, when based on this hypothesis, patients with Crohn’s disease were given sanitized “pig whip worms”. While these worms normally infest swine, they can only live in the human body for a couple of weeks. However, they provoke a strong immune response. And one that arrested the Crohn’s disease, by giving their immune systems a real target.
The next discovery came with an individual who suffered from severe, life-threatening asthma. He traveled to Africa to specifically get a colony of human hookworm. Hookworm used to be very common, but has almost been wiped out in North America through the use of outhouses and shoes, being spread in feces.
He cultivated this colony of hookworm, and periodically infects himself with it, by swabbing some nearly microscopic worms on his arm. The penetrate the skin, then travel in the bloodstream to the lungs, where they cause a mild cough, and are coughed up and swallowed. In the process his asthma is completely arrested for weeks.
Unfortunately, excessive hookworm can result in dangerous anemia in children, so this technique is reserved for adults.
But, in any event, since there are thousands of parasites that can infect humans, this opens an enormous channel of research to discover both what parasites are responsible for what autoimmune problems, and more importantly, how to replicate the effects of parasites without introducing the actual parasite.