Autoimmune Diseases: Yes, Some Can Be 'Switched Off'

Researchers have made an important breakthrough in the fight against the debilitating autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis by discovering how to stop cells from attacking healthy body tissue.

Findings published in the journal Nature Communications have discovered how cells convert from being aggressive to protecting against disease.

Researchers from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom (UK) hope that these new findings will also bring widespread insight into treating added autoimmune disorders, including type 1 diabetes, Graves' disease and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Estimates suggest that close to 2.5 million people worldwide are living with MS--a potentially debilitating neurodegenerative disorder that can impair speech, movement and muscle control.

For their research, scientists worked to selectively target cells that cause autoimmune diseases to dampen their own aggression against the body's own tissues while converting them into cells capable of protecting against the disease--a type of conversion that has been previously applied to allergies but has not been used for autoimmune diseases, yet.

Findings now show that this administration of protein fragments that normally target for attack lead to correction of the autoimmune response. The work also illustrates effective treatment that's achieved by gradually increasing the dose of antigenic fragments injected.

To figure out just how this type of immunotherapy works, scientists delved inside the cells to understand how genes and proteins were turned on or off by the treatment.

They found that changes in gene expression helped explain how effective treatments are.

"Insight into the molecular basis of antigen-specific immunotherapy opens up exciting new opportunities to enhance the selectivity of the approach while providing valuable markers with which to measure effective treatment," concluded lead study author professor David Wraith of the university, in a news release. "These findings have important implications for the many patients suffering from autoimmune conditions that are currently difficult to treat."