In a study appearing in the March 22 New England Journal of Medicine, scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) have discovered a connection between a specific gene and the inflammatory skin condition vitiligo, as well as a possible host of autoimmune diseases.
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In a ground-breaking study published in the top journal, Cell, Dr. James Dennis, senior investigator at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital, has discovered a new role for sugars on proteins.
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A new study by researchers at Children's and the University of Washington (UW) identifies a connection between allergic diseases such as atopic dermatitis, also known as eczema, and autoimmune diseases. The study was published in the April 1 edition of Nature Immunology.
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A complex autoimmune disease, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterized by chronic inflammation and progressive joint damage. This process begins with hyperplasia, or excessive increase in size and thickness, of synovial tissue. Along with provoking cartilage and bone destruction, this abnormal tissue growth is resistant to apoptosis, the natural cell death vital to the generation of healthy new cells.
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One cause of an immune regulatory cell malfunction, which underlies many autoimmune diseases, is when a mutation in a gene called FOXP3 disables the immune cells' ability to function.
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Investigators at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed) have found evidence that continues to implicate insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF-1R) in the development of Graves' disease.
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Autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis occur when the immune system fails to regulate itself. But researchers have not known precisely where the molecular breakdowns responsible for such failures occur.
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A steady rise in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) has been noted in recent decades, and environmental factors could be the cause of this increase. One theory, similar to the "hygiene hypothesis" in which an excessively germ-free environment may contribute to an increase in allergies, holds that a decline in infectious diseases may play a role in increasing autoimmune disease incidence.
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