Novel Approaches to Autoimmune Diseases: A Review of New Studies

In this review we have highlighted the most important of autoimmune disorders which occur when the body's immune system turns against the body itself, attacking it as if it were a foreign pathogen in human. More than 80% human diseases are due in part to an inappropriate immune system response that results in damage to an individual’s organs, tissues, or cells. Autoimmune diseases can affect any part of the body, and produced an array of clinical manifestations that can often be difficult to diagnose. At the same time, autoimmune diseases share many features related to their onset and progression. In addition, overlapping genetic traits enhance susceptibility to many of the diseases, so that a patient may suffer from more than one autoimmune disorder, or multiple autoimmune diseases may occur in the same family. Although, treatments are available for many autoimmune diseases; cures for most have yet to be discovered. For these and other reasons, autoimmune diseases are best recognized as a family of related disorders that must be studied collectively as well as individually. Although individual autoimmune diseases are relatively rare, as a group they are among the most prevalent diseases in the United States, affecting between 14.7 and 23.5 million people, i.e. approximately eight percent of the population, and are a leading cause of death among young and middle-aged women. For reasons that it is poorly understood, both the incidence and prevalence of autoimmune diseases is rising. The chronic and often debilitating nature of many autoimmune diseases increases the burden on patients, their families, and society in terms of medical costs, a reduction in the quality of life, and lost productivity. The total societal disease burden for autoimmune disorders is difficult to estimate because some of these are chronic and debilitating diseases, while others are less serious; arthritis on its own though is estimated to cause a $65 billion disease burden. The aim of this review is to provide an update on the current status and trends in autoimmune disorders, which as a group, constitute some of the most expensive diseases currently faced by humans. Not surprisingly then, these diseases are the subject of extensive research worldwide, in both academic and medical laboratories.