More Results for the Use of Immune System Reconstruction to Treat Autoimmunity

More evidence is accumulating to show that autoimmune diseases might be effectively treated by destroying the existing population of immune cells and then recreating them: the problem lies in the configuration and memory of those cells. The challenge in this is that, at present, the methods of destruction are harsh, akin to chemotherapy and certainly not something people would want to undergo for any but the most dangerous autoimmune conditions. A priority for the next few years is to find ways to selectively destroy immune cells safely and with few to no side-effects, at which point this type of immune reconstruction would be a very useful treatment for even minor autoimmunities. More pertinently, it would also open the door for the treatment of age-related dysfunction and failure of the immune system, a large component of the frailty of old age. Much of this decline is related to the accumulation of malfunctioning cells, or cells uselessly specialized to persistent pathogens like cytomegalovirus. If the slate could be wiped clean, we might expect there to be considerable improvement in immune response, even given the greater level of damage in cells and tissues characteristic of old age. New clinical trial results provide evidence that high-dose immunosuppressive therapy followed by transplantation of a person's own blood-forming stem cells can induce sustained remission of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune disease in which the immune syste...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs