A Potential Target to Prevent One Class of Autoimmune Diseases

Autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system malfunctions to attack the patient's own tissues, are a challenge to investigate. The immune system is enormously complex, and making a definitive determination of the specific problems in its regulation that cause autoimmunity has yet to be achieved for most forms of autoimmune disease. Fortunately there has been some progress, such as the identification of age-associated B cells as necessary in the development of autoimmunity, and here the determination that JunB is critical to some autoimmune diseases. In both cases, these mechanisms might be targeted to produce broadly effective therapies. Yet even in absence of any useful targets, if there was a way to safely destroy all immune cells - without the use of damaging chemotherapeutic drugs that cause significant side-effects and mortality - then all autoimmune diseases could be cured. Malfunctions are a matter of state, and that state is stored in the immune cells themselves; if they are all removed, and the immune system allowed to repopulate itself from scratch, then this effectively restores a pristine and correctly functioning state. Most of the current treatments against auto-immune diseases require to shut down major parts of the immune system, inhibiting desirable immune responses and, leaving the patient vulnerable to potentially life-threatening bacterial and viral infections. Such a drastic solution is required because until now scientists had yet not fully i...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs