Talk:Autoimmunity

Sub-Molecular?

The statement in the first sentence is extremely confusing to me. There is very little (if any) scientific information on the "sub-atomic" level more than just speculation. This statement seems almost ridiculous. Am I missing something? For now I'll note a citation needed, possibly will need to be reworded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.15.155.163 (talk) 04:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

MISC

The French site recently linked, depicting HLA associations with autoimmune diseases is a nice resource -- but the author of that page doesn't cite the sources for those Relative Risk figures. It highly improbable that it's WP:NOR. However, the author of that page includes no links, no references to original research articles, meta-studies or textbooks. I'm going to remove the link citing WP:VERIFY, with reservations. If the editor who inserted the link can find one that properly cites sources from peer-reviewed journals or textbooks, I'd gladly invite that editor to please reinsert the link. Jbarin 09:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

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"... where LDN has been reported as beneficial include multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, HIV/AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, AD in children (Elchaar GM, et al. 2006) " You call that a footnote? --GangofOne 06:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Fixed, copied footnote from 'Naltrexone' article; someone else came up with it.--GangofOne 22:16, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

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Hi, the beginning of the second paragraph in the introduction is confusing: The illusory misconception that an individual's immune system is totally incapable of recognising "self" antigens is not new. I have removed illusory to make it clearer, I hope its ok to do this.

Also the first paragraph in the introduction sets out autoimmuntiy as: failure of an organism to recognise its own constituent parts, and autoimmune disease being an abherent immune response. But the second paragraph jumps to "natural autoimmunity". I find the way the intoduction reads a bit confusing (I do have a science background, but don't know much about immunology - I came to wikipedia to read about autoimmune disease) could the authors of this page tie the two paragraphs of introduction together? Sligahan 16/09/2006

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Will add research into using enzyme potentiated desensitization (EPD) as a treatment for autoimmune disease. Others will hopefully know of other generic treatments that should go in this section. Peter Davies 20:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

-PubMed search for EPD (under its fullname, phrase-locked in quotes) reveals only 8 references, none more recent than 2002.Jbarin 10:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC) ____ Reconstructed discussion of regulatory/suppressor contributions to control of autoimmunity to emphasize CD4+FoxP3+ populations -- CD8+ T cells populations with regulatory functions have been described, but far less so than CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ T regs. Similarly, Tr1 cells, Th3 cells, and CD4-CD8- double-negative T cells have also been purported to carry immunoregulatory properties, while not being as widely studied.

The "Alternative Theories" subheading does not appear to be fully supported by current literature. Pubmed search for "autoimmun* naltrexone" returns only 7 references. "autoimmun* buprenorphine" returns 0. Jbarin 10:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

There has been some linkage reported between childhood trauma such as physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse linked to autoimmunity conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Dr. Deepak Chopra is one of the leading proponents of further investigation into the linkage between childhood trauma and AI conditions. Here is a brief mention about the possible link from the Cambridge Journal: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=211227

Ankylosing Spondylitis

Should the HLA-B27 added to the list of known loci for autoimmune diseases? Sensei 07:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Relocating content

I've brought this up on Talk:List of Autoimmune diseases, but I'll open it to discussion here, as well.

It's occurred to me that there's no discussion of the epidemiology of autoimmunity on that page, and that the discussion of it here actually works much better over there. So barring substantive objection, and rather than duplicate content, I'm going to relocate pretty much the entire introductory text from this article to the main Autoimmunity article. All in favor? Opposed? Jbarin 08:06, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Genetics section is out of date

Juvenile diabetes and celiac disease are clearly associated with HLA-DQ2.5 and HLA-DQ8 It gives almost no mention of rheumatoid arthritis. A large number of disease have been linked to HLA-DRPdeitiker 01:00, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

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I went ahead and removed the Pender references at the bottom: http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/list.php?browse=author&author_id=573 -- they're not so much about general mechanisms of autoimmunity, as they are specifically about neuroautoimmunity. May I suggest appending them to the multiple sclerosis page instead? Jbarin 22:35, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Spam

The CIDP link that was added earlier looks really suspect. Here's an excerpt from their website:

CIDPUSA Medical center offers the treatment of all autoimmune diseases, cancers, pain disorders with preventative treatments for heart disease, stroke and cancer. We are the first clinic in the world to offer complete reversal and prevention of Alzheimers. With nanotechnology we can treat any infectious disease anywhere. Our race is on for the first nano particle to cure multiple infectious diseases.

I've deleted it, and I'll be reviewing the other links in a minute. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The CIDPUSA link reappeared again. Despite their preferred form of labeling the link, CIDPUSA is not an American charity. It's located in Punjabi, India and there is no indication that it is a registered charity.

The point of the website is to part desperate patients from the money. See this link if you want to have his book e-mail to you, or pay US$200 for a "full treatment guidelines." The information on the website is limited, non-encyclopedic tabloid fodder ("A gene in the British Royal Family triggers autoimmune diseases!"), and much of the information is "alternative" at best, by which I mean "wrong." For example, they announce on their main page, that bras cause breast cancer, that "All heart disease and strokes are autoimmune," that Alzheimer's disease "Alzheimers is a autoimmune disease, completely reversible contact our clinic for any questions. We also know the bacteria which triggers..."!

Furthermore, the name of the psychiatrist who is listed on their website (Imran Khan) is the same as the name of the Wikipedia user (IKhan700) who keeps inserting the link, which means that we might have a self-promotional conflict of interest here. I ask all regular editors of this page to please help me keep the External Links section free of questionable links. It is not necessary for a Wikipedia article to have any external links, but if we're going to have them, they should provide encyclopedic information, not opportunities to pay for a medical consultation by e-mail.

Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Sex and Gender

An anon IP editor switched "sex" to "gender," presumably because the editor thinks that gender is a politer term. I've reverted the edits because gender is more commonly used to refer to a social role, and sex is more commonly used to refer to a biological state (see the quoted ref below). It's the genetics, not the social role, that matter for this purpose.

In popularized and scientifically debased usage, sex is what you are biologically; gender is what you become socially; gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness; and gender role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and feminine.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

please add more on autoimmunity's relationship to evolution

more could be added on any possible reason(s) on why auto-immune genetic predispostion exists in our gene pool.

There's little more than unsubstantiated speculation in current medical literature. Spontaneous autoimmune disease has been observed in other species, but there are enormous gaps in that survey, too numerous for researchers to advance more than the most cursory of hypothetical guesses as to the true comparative pathobiology of autoimmunity. Jbarin (talk) 09:43, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

post-partum and post-infection - revving up the immune system theory triggering manifestation of auto-immune disease in genetic predisposed individuals

I think more could be added on this topic.

Again, very little is known on the subject mechanistically or clinically, beyond than the observations already stated in the text that some autoimmune diseases flare, whereas others remit during reproductive cycling in females. Jbarin (talk) 09:44, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

genetic predispostion and graves and shougrans (spelling?)

not mentioned. please add.

Presumably the information about specific diseases is covered in the articles on those diseases: Graves disease and Sjogren's disease. If we tried to include even a small sample of the hundreds of autoimmune diseases in this article, it would quickly become useless to anyone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Autoimmune disease / Autoimmunity

Why do we have two articles about the exact same medical condition? --Thermoproteus (talk) 21:45, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Not all autoimmunity is pathologic in nature. There's a brief discussion in the first paragraph that a substantial fraction of otherwise healthy patients manifest some signs of autoreactive antibody or T cell response. And there's the longstanding outstanding question of how much tumor surveillance relies upon recognition of "altered self" or true autoimmunity - in which case, autoimmunity protects the host from disease. Of the many problems with this article, clarifying that distinction doesn't seem to be a high priority, given that a substantial fraction of the medical community and laymen use "autoimmunity" and "autoimmune disease" interchangeably. Jbarin (talk) 09:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Sequestered antigens

In the section on pathogenesis of autoimmunity it does not talk about proteins that are sequestered away from the immune system like gametes, the lens of the eye, and myelin basic protein. In the case of these proteins because they are sequestered wouldn't these be seen as non-self if they were somehow exposed to the body through an injury? Would this count as an autoimmune disorder given that antigens of these proteins are not expressed in the thymus on medullary epithelial cells resulting in T cells against these antigens not undergoing negative selection? TheIguana (talk) 23:29, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The term "immunologic ignorance" and others have been used in the review literature to account for the sequestration phenomena you're talking about. The discovery and characterization of Template:AIRE in APS1/APECED patients has provided some understanding of central tolerance to peripherally-restricted antigens - however, much work remains in order to come to an even remotely comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms of "ignorance" and how it relates to the development and maintenance of autoreactive repertoires. Jbarin (talk) 09:17, 27 October 2010 (UTC)