Journal
AUTOIMMUNITY REVIEWS
Volume 13, Issue 6, Pages 635-640Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.autrev.2013.12.003
Keywords
Autoimmune diseases; Multiple autoimmune syndrome; Kaleidoscope; Mosaic; Stress; Autoantigens
Categories
Funding
- NSW Health Department
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An autoimmune disease (AD), organ-specific or systemic, results from an aberrant response in which the protective immune system normally schooled to recognize and destroy invading infectious agents (viruses, etc.) instead fails to distinguish self-antigens and proceeds to attack and destroy the host's organs. There can be familial aggregation in which a single AD may occur in members of a family, or a single family may be afflicted with multiple ADs. Finally, sometimes multiple ADs co-occur in a single individual: the kaleidoscope of autoimmunity. Autoimmunity is a multifactorial process in which genetic, hormonal, immunological and environmental factors act in concert to materialize the mosaic of autoimmunity phenomenon. A genetically primed individual may yet not develop an AD: the contribution by an environmental factor (non-infectious or infectious) is essential for completion of the act. Of the non-infectious factors, stress plays a determinative step in autoimmunity in that it abrogates viral latency and thereby ordains the viruses to qualify as infectious environmental factors that trigger ADs. This is note-worthy as viruses rank first as the most important environmental triggers of ADs. Furthermore, all these viruses experience going through latency. Hence the hypothesis: The abrogation of viral latency by stress, a non-infectious environmental agent, is an intrinsic prerequisite prelude before viruses can rank as infectious environmental agents that trigger autoimmune diseases. There is collaboration here between non-infectious- and infectious-agent to achieve the cause of autoimmunity. We say viral latency and stress have a covenant: continued perpetration of autoimmunity is dependent on the intervention by stress to reactivate latent infections. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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