Is Your Immune System Predisposed to Automune Diseases?

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There has been an increase in pretty much all artimmune diseases over bout the last forty years. Many patients will have more than one different type of automune disease. But what determines the specific location is often related to the environmental trigger that may have set it off in the first place. It sometimes also related to the natural way in which our immune system does work differently in different sights in the body. And actually, many of these conditions are still increase ing by up to sort of five to nine % every year.

Could the food we eat and the air we breathe be damaging our immune systems? The number of people with autoimmune diseases, from rheumatoid arthritis to type 1 diabetes, began to increase around 40 years ago in the west. Now, some are also emerging in countries that had never seen the diseases before. In this episode from January 2022, Ian Sample speaks to the genetic scientist and consultant gastroenterologist James Lee about how this points to what western lifestyles might be doing to our health, and how genetics could reveal exactly how our immune systems are malfunctioning. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod