Autoimmune disease

When the body becomes the target of its own defensive arsenal, medicine must step in.

Links between COVID-19 and autoimmunity, a better model of coeliac disease, and other highlights from clinical trials and laboratory studies.

The body’s immune response to viruses has long been thought to spark autoimmune disease. A virus affecting millions of people could help researchers to finally know for sure.

The biological basis for sex differences in autoimmune diseases are beginning to come into focus.

Intestinal microbes shape the course of diseases such as Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis — and could even help to keep them in check.

Molecular geneticist Angela Christiano explains why one treatment is not enough for this neglected autoimmune disease that causes hair loss.

Genomic analysis is helping reserachers to understand the causes of autoimmunity, but it will not be easy to translate this into treatments.

Biotechnology companies are engineering regulatory T cells to help protect the body from friendly fire.

Neurosurgeon Kevin J. Tracey talks to Nature about controlling inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis by stimulating the vagus nerve.

Trials to replace the pancreatic β cells that are destroyed by this autoimmune disease are raising hopes of a cure.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented changes in rheumatology clinical practice. In this Viewpoint article, we asked five experts to describe their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, how their clinical practice has changed, and the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

In this Review, the authors discuss the roles of B cells in multiple sclerosis and consider the insights gained from the immunological effects of B cell-targeted therapies and autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation as well as the potential for these insights to improve our understanding.

Tsokos reviews how the genetic, epigenetic and microbial environments influence innate and adaptive immune cells to drive immunopathology and organ damage in systemic lupus erythematosus.

This Review highlights the research advances, advantages and challenges in several different strategies for generating functional β-cells for therapeutic use in diabetes mellitus. In addition, scalable bioengineering processes are also discussed for the realization of the therapeutic potential of derived β-cells.

Therapies based on adoptive cellular transfer of regulatory T (T_reg) cells are currently undergoing clinical trials for autoimmune diseases, graft-versus-host disease and the prevention of transplant rejection. This Review provides an overview of T_reg cell biology and discusses the latest approaches to enhance T_reg cells for therapeutic purposes.

This Review outlines several genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that could explain sex bias in rheumatic diseases, including X chromosome inactivation, sex chromosome aneuploidy and microchimerism, considering evidence from clinical and experimental studies.

Germ-free mice co-colonized with two bacterial strains from the small intestinal flora showed increased susceptibility to experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, implicating the synergistic effects of these microorganisms in this mouse model of multiple sclerosis.

An HLA- and gluten-dependent mouse model of coeliac disease with villous atrophy provides evidence for the cooperative role of IL-15 and gluten-specific CD4⁺ T cells in licensing the full activation of cytotoxic T cells that are necessary for inducing epithelial damage.