Autoimmunity and Autoimmune Disease

Autoimmune processes are proving to be underlying or contributory causes of increasing numbers of serious human disorders. This symposium focuses on the advances in our basic understanding of the immune response and its regulation that are enabling specific immunotherapy to be developed.

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Autoimmune processes are proving to be underlying or contributory causes of increasing numbers of serious human disorders, including diabetes mellitus, Graves' disease, myasthenia gravis and rheumatoid arthritis. This symposium focuses on the advances in our basic understanding of the immune response and its regulation that are enabling specific, rational immunotherapy to be developed for these diseases. The nature of intracellular and cell surface-derived self antigens is considered here. Studies of murine autoimmune myocarditis are described in which cardiac myosin is identified as the autoantigen. Competing theories of the generation of immune tolerance are discussed, together with the implications of current ideas about immunoregulatory networks and the question of whether autoimmunity is a state of over-activity of the immune system or one of under- activity. Other chapters consider the exploitation of the immunoregulatory network in the treatment of experimental interstitial nephritis and other autoimmune conditions. The contributions of interferons and of class II HLA antigen expression to autoimmunity are presented.
Suggested links between autoimmunity and immunodeficiency, and between autoimmunity and genetic complement deficiency, are also debated. The use of monoclonal anti-Ia antibodies to treat animal models of human autoimmune conditions suggests a way forward therapeutically, and the symposium ends with an assessment of the future of the immunoregulatory approach to diseases such as antiglomerular membrane disease, the systemic vasculitides, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.