"The Hygiene Hypothesis" -- Is being too clean a bad thing when it comes to autoimmune disease? Yes, according to World Health Organization epidemiological data which indicate that ADs like type-1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis are extremely rare in most African and Asian populations, yet they increase conspicuously when these same populations migrate to a modern setting."Environmental Triggers" -- After heredity and epigenetics, environmental triggers come next as a causative factor for autoimmune disease. Beyond drug-induced AD, other suspected environmental triggers include infections, vaccines, female hormones, UVB radiation exposure, fetal blood cells, stress, vitamin-D deficiency and pollutants/toxins.
Current Therapies and Future Pipeline
The vast majority of currently available therapies target only 10 or fewer of the 149 unique autoimmune or autoimmune-related diseases. In addition, new drug development programs don't do much better. They only target 30 percent of these diseases.Research programs that seek to find common mechanisms among groups of autoimmune diseases may provide a more reasonable and effective way forward. Given that the drug development process takes roughly 7-10 years, and that the current pipeline lacks candidates for over 70 percent of the known autoimmune diseases, patients may have to wait at least a decade before seeing any progress. Based on various reports, the global autoimmune therapeutics market is projected to reach between US $49 -69 billion by 2014.The Way Forward
Looking to the future of AD diagnosis, management and research, the report calls for:
increased awareness that AD runs in families and/or that there is a genetic pre-disposition; clinical training for physicians which emphasizes the nature and relationship of the various ADs;the creation of autoimmunologists who can provide a full perspective of AD, develop an overall patient management plan for specific diseases and refer patients to related specialists when needed;improved therapeutic interventions for the full spectrum of ADs, regardless of prevalence; and, the evaluation and identification of environmental autoimmune triggers so that susceptible individuals can avoid them and minimize or prevent the onset of an AD.SOURCE American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA)