Bacteria can help us cure autoimmune disease

[xchrom]

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Bacteria/can/help/us/cure/autoimmune/disease/elpepusoc/20111216elpepusoc_5/Tes

Most of the time our immune system does its job efficiently without us noticing. It clears our bodies from potentially harmful bacteria, fungi and viruses, but it is also involved in removing or destroying our own cells if given the signal that a particular cell is damaged or diseased (i.e. viral infections or transformation into cancer cells).

The human immune system is very powerful, and if it?for genetic, environmental, or unknown reasons?is directed towards ourselves, it can lead to the very serious so-called autoimmune diseases. An autoimmune disease can affect specific organ systems, such as joints (rheumatoid arthritis) or the central nervous system (multiple sclerosis), or more or less the whole body (systemic lupus erythematosus or SLE). A central component in many autoimmune diseases is autoantibodies, which are antibodies directed towards our own tissues (autoantigen) instead of foreign material. The binding of autoantibodies to our tissues leads to the activation of white bloods cells and other accessory components of our immune system, resulting in a massive inflammation and destruction of cells and tissues (see figure).

Current therapies of antibody-mediated autoimmune disease focus on reducing the amount of autoantibodies by using general immunosuppressants such as corticosteroids or chemotherapy, by physical removal of antibodies by a process called plasmapherisis, or by using other antibodies towards the antibody producing white blood cells.

In the hunt for new treatments for antibody-mediated autoimmune disease, we turned to the real experts on modulation of the human immune system - disease-causing bacteria. Our rationale is that bacteria have co-evolved with their human and animal hosts for a very long time, and bacteria would have been extinct if they would have not found ways to circumvent the host's immune defense. We focused on the bacteria group A streptococci (GAS, i.e. "strep throat" bacteria), which have multiple ways of avoiding the immune system.

[Warpy]

1. Gee, maybe being a galloping slob

and living in squalor has its upside, my alphabet soup of autoimmune diseases being more under control than they would have been had my sight remained intact and I had developed motivation to become an antiseptic housekeeper. Who knew?

This is just a variation on another study that found markedly lower rates of autoimmune diseases in people in the third world who were infested with internal parasites.

However, since RA was first noticed in skeletal remains starting around 400CE, it seems unlikely that constant exercise of one's immune system is much of a preventive or cure.