At the moment, there aren't any cures or preventative measures for automu diseases right now. Do you think some of this work could change that could lead to some answers in that direction? We certainly hope so. The things that the genetic allows us to study are those events that happen right at the time that the disease develops. And that if we can understand what's going wrong at the point of disease development, then it may well be possible, for example, in families where many people are affected by a cular disease,. Could we intervene at a preventative level? To try and reduce their chance of getting that disease for those individuals who haven't yet been affected is absolutely something we
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. Ian Sample speaks to 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
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