University of Delaware researchers have identified a protein, hiding in plain sight, that acts like a bodyguard to help protect and stabilize another key protein, that when unstable, is involved in Crohn’s disease. The fundamental research points to a possible pathway for developing novel therapies for the inflammatory bowel disease.
Among patients with the systemic autoimmune disease primary Sjögren syndrome, use of hydroxychloroquine, the most frequently prescribed treatment for the disorder, did not improve symptoms during 24 weeks of treatment compared with placebo, according to a study in the July 16 issue of JAMA.
Uveitis occurs when immune cells invade the eye, causing inflammation, swelling and vision loss. Researchers at the National Eye Institute (NEI) have found a unique type of immune cell and a secreted protein that, in tests on mice, can protect against the disease.
Among patients with a severe, life-threatening type of sclerosis, treatment with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), compared to intravenous infusion of the chemotherapeutic drug cyclophosphamide, was associated with an increased treatment-related risk of death in the first year, but better long-term survival, according to a study in the June 25 issue of JAMA.
Autoimmune disease occurs when the body's own natural defense system rebels against itself. One example is pemphigus vulgaris (PV), a blistering skin disease in which autoantibodies attack desmoglein 3 (Dsg3), the protein that binds together skin cells. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania recently found a shared genetic link in the autoimmune response among PV patients that provides important new clues about how autoantibodies in PV originate.
What began as a letter to her two children about her experiences living with multiple autoimmune diseases, quickly morphed into a book by Donna Weir. “Strange Body: Common Autoimmune Disease Questions Answered” chronicles Weir’s life during the past decade as she struggled with ailments that often left her weak and combative. The book is on sale now and the royalties from digital downloads purchased through July 15 will be donated to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA).
Researchers at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) used cutting-edge tetramer technology developed at BRI to find the T cells that drive rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Mice severely disabled by a condition similar to multiple sclerosis (MS) were able to walk less than two weeks following treatment with human neural stem cells. The finding, which uncovers potential new avenues for treating MS, will be published online on May 15, 2014, in the journal Stem Cell Reports.
The discovery of a crucial mechanism that controls the activation of T cells, a blood cell whose primary job is to fight infection in the body, may enable the development of new drugs to treat autoimmune disease, transplant rejection, and similar disorders in which T cells play a major role. The finding, "T Cell Receptor Signals to NF-kB Are Transmitted by a Cytosolic p62-Bcl10-Malt1-IKK Signalosome," was published in the May 13 issue of Science Signaling.
A newly identified difference between the brains of women and men with multiple sclerosis (MS) may help explain why so many more women than men get the disease, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report.
American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) will be holding its first-ever scientific symposium focusing on the microbiome – the trillions of bacteria that reside in the human body.
Investigators at UAB have teamed with the arthritis support community CreakyJoints.org to launch a study to incorporate electronic devices to capture important information on conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis from patients and physicians.
The effort is funded by a $1 million award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, Inc. (AARDA) has launched the first-of-its kind autoimmune curriculum for teachers of grades three through eight.
The cause of neuronal death in Parkinson’s disease is still unknown, but a new study proposes that neurons may be mistaken for foreign invaders and killed by the person’s own immune system, similar to the way autoimmune diseases like type I diabetes, celiac disease, and multiple sclerosis attack the body’s cells.
Most autoimmune diseases disproportionately affect women, but scientists do not know why. Researchers say they’ve discovered a group of immune-regulating genes that increase activity in the presence of estrogen, which could help explain why women are better able to fight off infectious disease – and why they are more at risk for developing autoimmune diseases like lupus. The discovery also opens the door for new therapies that could help regulate estrogen’s impact on these hormone-sensitive genes.
Rheumatoid arthritis patients are likelier than the average person to develop chronic kidney disease, and more severe inflammation in the first year of rheumatoid arthritis, corticosteroid use, high blood pressure and obesity are among the risk factors, new Mayo Clinic research shows. Physicians should test rheumatoid arthritis patients periodically for signs of kidney problems, and patients should work to keep blood pressure under control, avoid a high-salt diet, and eliminate or scale back medications damaging to the kidneys, says senior author Eric Matteson, M.D., Mayo rheumatology chair. The study is published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, the National Kidney Foundation journal.
Tweaking a specific cell type’s ability to absorb potassium in the brain improved walking and prolonged survival in a mouse model of Huntington’s disease, reports a UCLA study in Nature Neuroscience. The discovery could point to new drug targets for treating the devastating disease, which strikes one in every 20,000 Americans.
• A receptor called B7-1 is expressed by kidney cells during the progression of kidney disease in diabetic mice and humans.
• Targeting this receptor with an available drug called CTLA4-Ig, or abatacept, helps to maintain kidney function in mice.
Gout is on the rise among U.S. men and women, and this piercingly painful and most common form of inflammatory arthritis is turning out to be more complicated than had been thought. The standard way to check for gout is by drawing fluid or tissue from an affected joint and looking for uric acid crystals, a test known as a needle aspirate. That usually works, but not always: In a new Mayo Clinic study, X-rays known as dual-energy CT scans found gout in one-third of patients whose aspirates tested negative for the disease. The CT scans allowed rheumatologists to diagnose gout and treat those patients with the proper medication.
One person’s unique ability to fight HIV has provided key insights into an immune response that researchers now hope to trigger with a vaccine, according to findings reported by a team that includes Duke Medicine scientists.
In honor of National Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month (ADAM), the National Coalition of Autoimmune Patient Groups will host a news briefing to release the results of two new surveys of autoimmune patients and a preliminary study of physicians, as well as launch a new first-of-its-kind national autoimmune disease registry.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have mapped key elements of a severe immune overreaction—a “cytokine storm.” Their findings also clarify the workings of a potent new class of anti-inflammatory compounds that prevent this immune overreaction in animal models.
Shingles is a painful viral infection that affects almost one million people worldwide and 30 percent of Americans every year. Known as herpes zoster, it’s caused by the same virus that causes chicken pox, the varicella-zoster virus. The outbreak occurs mostly in people older than 50 because the virus can lay dormant in the nerve tissue of the body for many years then become activated and cause shingles later in life.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker, Courtney G. Smith, has teamed up with the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, Inc. (AARDA) to raise awareness of autoimmune disease among African American women.
People living with Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disorder, appear to function at a level comparable to their healthier peers, according to a cross-sectional study published online in advance of print in Clinical Rheumatology. The study from researchers at Tufts reveals that people living with Sjögren’s perceive significant decline in cognitive, psychological and physical function. Nonetheless, despite the burdens of the disease, levels of function approach that of healthy controls.
The Lupus Foundation of America announced it is accepting applications to provide critical funding for lupus scientific research, at a time when government funds for lupus research can't keep pace with the accelerating growth of lupus scientific opportunities. The new LIFELINE Grant Program will provide research funds to help mitigate the potential loss in scientific momentum and loss of current and future lupus investigators due to disappearing federal research funds, just as lupus research is on the brink of breakthroughs.
Shoulder arthritis is a common problem for rheumatoid arthritis patients: pain and difficulty moving their arms can grow so severe that daily tasks and sleep become difficult. If medication and physical therapy aren’t enough, shoulder replacement surgery is a common next step. Despite surgical challenges with some rheumatoid arthritis patients, the procedure improves range of motion and reduces pain in nearly all cases, especially for those with intact rotator cuffs, a Mayo Clinic study shows. The findings are published in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery.
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified a normally small subset of immune cells that may play a major role in the development of Crohn’s disease generally and in disease-associated steroid resistance specifically.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have zoomed in on what is going on at the molecular level when the body recognizes and defends against an attack of pathogens, and the findings, they say, could influence how drugs are developed to treat autoimmune diseases.
An experimental compound developed by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute's Florida campus is capable of significantly reducing joint inflammation in animal models of rheumatoid arthritis.
This study at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, funded by the Scleroderma Research Foundation, shows a link between scleroderma and cancer
The study identifies the BTLA inhibitory receptor as a key factor in limiting inflammatory responses, particularly in skin. The research has important implications for psoriasis drug development. By targeting the BTLA receptor, inflammatory responses can be reined to restore immune homeostasis.
Collaborating with researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, a research team at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine led by Kezhong Zhang, Ph.D., has contributed to an important discovery in the inflammatory stress mechanism and specific inhibitor for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report that disrupting the light-dark cycle of mice increased their susceptibility to inflammatory disease, indicating that the production of a key immune cell is controlled by the body’s circadian clock.
Autoantibodies are present many years before symptom onset in patients with primary Sjögren syndrome, an autoimmune disease, according to a Research Letter published in the November 6 issue of JAMA.
Researchers have linked a species of intestinal bacteria known as Prevotella copri to the onset of rheumatoid arthritis, the first demonstration in humans that the chronic inflammatory joint disease may be mediated in part by specific intestinal bacteria. The new findings by laboratory scientists and clinical researchers in rheumatology at NYU School of Medicine add to the growing evidence that the trillions of microbes in our body play an important role in regulating our health.
Experiments by scientists at Johns Hopkins and in Boston have unraveled two biological mechanisms as the major cause of protein citrullination in rheumatoid arthritis. Protein citrullination is suspected of sparking the immune system and driving the cascade of events leading to the disease.
Experts from NYU Langone’s Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology presented new research and participated in expert panel discussions at the American College of Rheumatology 2013 Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA, October 26-30.
Scientists in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital have found a way to overcome one of the biggest obstacles to using viruses to deliver therapeutic genes: how to keep the immune system from neutralizing the virus before it can deliver its genetic payload.
The number of children and young adults with autoimmune diseases receiving the HPV vaccination is profoundly low despite studies showing the vaccine to be safe and effective, according to research presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in San Diego. Given the increased incidence of HPV in people with autoimmune diseases, this research suggests that increased public health efforts are needed.
Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors commonly used to control blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes may also reduce the risk of autoimmune diseases in these patients, according to research presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in San Diego.
Rheumatoid arthritis patients who use tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (called Anti-TNFs) to control their disease-related inflammation also have a decreased risk for heart attacks, according to research findings presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in San Diego.
Treating rheumatoid arthritis patients with intensive pharmacological agents, such as biologic drugs, may reduce the need for orthopedic joint surgery, according to research presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in San Diego.