12 replies to this topic

[realmaverick]

I'm not sure how popular this article is, but somebody over at another forum linked me to it. Sorry if it's old news! It give me a wealth of knowledge, that I didn't previously have. Despite tens of hours of reading about Celiacs. It explains what autoimmune disorders are, their possible causes and the links with the gut and even explains why we're sick, from a cellular level.

I did post a link, on another thread I made but the thread was about UK Dr's and fear most of you will never read it! haha

I've not quite digested it all yet. I'll need to read it a couple of times to fully understand, but it's a very interesting read. It's a huge post, so be warned. But it somehow kept my attention.

The article isn't focused on Celiacs but more on autoimmune disorders but it's very apt.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think. Understanding Autoimmune Diseases

[MissBecky]

Thank you for posting this! I found it really interesting, I'm bookmarking it.

[Jaymie Jaymz]

Thanks for posting that article. I'm about halfway through it and hope to finish it up later today. Very informative. I have a lot of the signs of an autoimmune condition.

[Skylark]

Um... That's a really bad article. It's taking some legitimate science and spinning a ridiculous story from it. Note the complete lack of scientific references and all the scare words.

[i-geek]

Um... That's a really bad article. It's taking some legitimate science and spinning a ridiculous story from it. Note the complete lack of scientific references and all the scare words.

This. Also, the T cell biology is out of date and what is there is highly inaccurate. As a T cell immunologist, I am actually offended that someone wrote this article with so many inaccuracies. T cell-based autoimmunity results from inappropriate selection of immature T cells during their development in the thymus. T cells are normally selected so that they recognize but don't respond in an inappropriate way to self-proteins- T cells that respond too strongly to self-proteins are normally directed to die before they finish developing, a failsafe which is broken in people with autoimmune disease. It has nothing to do with cells in the peripheral organs not being able to signal that they are "self". I'll stop there so as not to nerd out too much, but I couldn't read on much further anyway.

[realmaverick]

Interesting. I guess it just shows how much misinformation there is out there. This topic in particular, is proving very difficult to know what is true / false and which is out of date. Hmm

[Skylark]

Spend some quality time on Pubmed instead of Google. Pubmed is a database of peer-reviewed scientific literature run by the National Library of Medicine. It's a little harder to read, and sometimes finding a full article requires a trek to your local campus biomedical library, but more and more articles are available online for free and you can learn a fair amount just skimming abstracts. Look for review articles, as those are usually more of an overview.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

If you have something that looks really interesting and you can't quite understand it, there are enough scientists around the board that we can probably sort it out for you.

[yolo]

Spend some quality time on Pubmed instead of Google. Pubmed is a database of peer-reviewed scientific literature run by the National Library of Medicine. It's a little harder to read, and sometimes finding a full article requires a trek to your local campus biomedical library, but more and more articles are available online for free and you can learn a fair amount just skimming abstracts. Look for review articles, as those are usually more of an overview.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

If you have something that looks really interesting and you can't quite understand it, there are enough scientists around the board that we can probably sort it out for you.

Thanks for the web suggestion Skylark! Do you have any specific articles on auto immune problems that you would recommend?

It is hard to know what really is what medically with celiac and auto immune conditions period--especially for us lay people--plus it seems difficult for many doctors. Auto immune conditions seem so counter intuitive if you get what I mean-- i.e., we have an over active immune system rather than the usual under active one when someone is not feeling well.

Bea

[Skylark]

I usually start searching with a phrase like maybe "autoimmunity mechanism". A list of articles will come up, many of them very detailed. On the right is a little tab where you can select review articles. Look through the reviews to find one that's free online and start reading. You will see related articles on the right too as you're browsing reviews and you can often find more interesting articles that way. At the end of every scientific article there is a reference list and nowadays they are often linked and you can read at least the abstract of things the author mentions. It IS technical, and you will learn as you go. Wikipedia is helpful sometimes, when you need to understand more biology.

You will find conflicting views, conflicting results, and a lot of questions, which is how science works. We always present the data, so that people can form their own opinions or put the data into a different context. Sometimes an experimental result doesn't make a lot of sense until years later when more is known about the immune system.

I am only really familiar with the celiac literature so I'm afraid I don't have any specific recommendations as far as autoimmune researchers to look for.

[i-geek]

Thanks for the web suggestion Skylark! Do you have any specific articles on auto immune problems that you would recommend?

It is hard to know what really is what medically with celiac and auto immune conditions period--especially for us lay people--plus it seems difficult for many doctors. Auto immune conditions seem so counter intuitive if you get what I mean-- i.e., we have an over active immune system rather than the usual under active one when someone is not feeling well.

Bea

Nerd alert again- a lot of why you feel sick when you have, say, a cold is due to your very active immune system spitting out inflammatory chemicals and causing tissue damage in the process of clearing the infection. And fever is actually good- it upregulates heat shock proteins that help cells recognize infection. Autoimmune cells are behaving in a similar inflammatory manner, except that there's no target infection to clear, just one's own cells.

I've also noticed from watching my grad advisor and dissertation committee members teach immunology to med students that the vast majority of med students don't give a toss about immunology beyond what they need to memorize for the test or the basics of very specific diseases. That is why so many medical doctors don't seem to have much of a clue about autoimmune disease.

[i-geek]

Here's a link to a short review on autoimmune T cells from the Public Library of Science Biology journal: http://www.plosbiolo...al.pbio.0040393

It should be freely available to the public. If I come across any other good ones that are free I'll post links.

[Skylark]

I've also noticed from watching my grad advisor and dissertation committee members teach immunology to med students that the vast majority of med students don't give a toss about immunology beyond what they need to memorize for the test or the basics of very specific diseases. That is why so many medical doctors don't seem to have much of a clue about autoimmune disease.

The vast majority of med students don't give a toss about much of anything when it comes to basic biology. It's much like working with undergraduates, where there is an unhealthy concern for what will be on the tests and things are learned by rote rather than by mechanistic understanding.

[FooGirlsMom]

Thanks for the article. That was easy to understand & made a lot of sense

FooGirlsMom