Unsolved Questions about Autoimmunity: Oct 9, 2017

I) True or false? An unusually high (or low?) percentage of treatments of autoimmune diseases work by inhibiting symptoms instead of curing causes? (As compared with other diseases.)

II) What do you think is probably the reason for this situation?

    A) When symptoms are treated, patients are satisfied sooner, or more satisfied.

    B) Economic motivations. When symptoms are treated, patients have to continue taking drugs forever, instead of stopping treatment once they are cured.

    C) You can't treat causes until after you understand the mechanism of a disease. But symptoms can often be inhibited without understanding causes.

III) True or false? Different autoimmune diseases have as much or more in common with each other as different kinds of cancer?

IV) True or false? A cure for lupus would probably also cure multiple sclerosis?

V) Which of the following is more likely to be the cause of more autoimmune diseases?

    A) Reactivation of the "Generator Of Diversity", which is random DNA recombination processes that create the binding sites of antibodies and T lymphocyte receptors. (i.e. reactivation later in life, long after birth)

    B) Failure of the tolerance mechanism to weed out B and T lymphocytes whose binding sites fit the shapes of one or more normal molecules of the body?

    C) Concealment of antigens so that the tolerance mechanism fails to detect their existence?

    D) Death or inactivation of "memory cells" used it the process of detecting whether antigens are self or non-self.

    E) Exposure of antigens whose existence had previously been hidden from the tolerance mechanism (i.e. so that their corresponding B and/or T lymphocytes didn't get weeded out.

VI) Which of these five preceding possible causes would be disproven and/or which confirmed by evidence that each victim of a given autoimmune disease were attacked by both B and T lymphocytes, that had binding sites with the same shapes as each other?

VII) Would you be surprised if people with some particular autoimmune disease had both B and T lymphocytes that have the same shaped binding sites as each other, & attacked the same tissue? Why? Or why not?