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4 out of 5 patients with autoimmune diseases are women. The new study reveals why

2024-02-10 17:52:32Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
4 out of 5 patients with autoimmune diseases are women. The new study reveals
4 out of 5 patients with autoimmune diseases are women. The new study reveals why

Why women are at greater risk of autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis is a long-standing medical mystery, and a team of researchers at Stanford University may now be one step closer to unraveling it.

The way the female body handles its extra X chromosome may be a factor that helps explain why women are more susceptible to these types of disorders, a new study suggests.

While the research involving experiments in mice is preliminary, the observation, upon further study, could help inform new treatments and ways to diagnose diseases, said Dr. Howard Chang, author of the paper published in the journal Cell.

Chang, a professor of dermatology and genetics at Stanford School of Medicine who led the research, was interested in the topic because symptoms of some autoimmune disorders such as lupus appear on the skin as rashes.

"Many of these diseases that appear in our clinics, especially immune-related diseases, show that women are more affected by such diseases," he said.

There are more than 80 autoimmune diseases, affecting about 24 million people in the United States alone. The disorders occur when a person's immune system becomes confused and begins to respond as if it is being attacked by an infection when there is none, explained Montserrat Anguera, a professor in the department of biomedical sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

"The same type that act in response to a virus or bacteria are those that act in immune disease, but in autoimmune disease, the 'infection' is not being cleared, it persists and persistently enlarges and causes tissue damage, depending on autoimmune disease," explained Anguera, who was not involved in the research.

"Some of them affect the whole body and others are localized to a certain organ."

Other researchers had focused on the "female bias" of the disorder by analyzing sex hormones or chromosome numbers. Chang instead focused on the role played by a molecule called Xist that is not present in male cells.

The main job of the Xist molecule is to inactivate the second female X chromosome in embryos, ensuring that the body's cells don't get a potentially toxic double whammy of chromosome proteins.

"Xist is a very long RNA and binds to approximately 100 proteins," Chang said.

While studying for exams to renew his medical license just under a decade ago, Chang made a connection. He noticed that many of the proteins that Xist works with to bind to and 'silence' the X chromosome had a link with skin-related autoimmune disorders: Patients with these problems had autoantibodies that mistakenly attacked those normal proteins.

Chang wondered if the clumps of protein molecules that arise when Xist binds to the X chromosome were a trigger for autoimmune disease.

"It's not just an individual's genetics. There's a whole other aspect which is interactions with the environment," Anguera said. "So it's diet, the microbiome, and then behaviors like smoking."

Autoimmune diseases are difficult to detect and often take years to diagnose. Ultimately, Chang said he hopes the findings can speed up that process.


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