Courses

There are more than a hundred different types of autoimmune diseases, all characterized by an attack on the body’s healthy tissues and organs by the immune system. Globally, the most common autoimmune diseases include lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, and scleroderma. While these conditions affect both men and women, in the United States, women represent 78 percent of new autoimmune disease diagnoses. However, despite this general gender bias, men are more often diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, ankylosing spondylitis, and psoriasis autoimmunities than women.

In this course, we will examine the mechanisms that underlie autoimmunity and the genetic and lifestyle factors that put us at greater risk of developing autoimmune diseases. We will explore answers to questions like why the immune system turns against the body, why women are more often affected than men, why our genes can make us more susceptible to autoimmune diseases, how inflammation increases our risk of developing autoimmunity, and how lifestyle factors can play a role in both increasing and decreasing our risk of autoimmune diseases. We’ll wrap up our course with a discussion about what current research can tell us about managing autoimmune diseases using newly developed immunotherapies and what is known about lifestyle intervention in managing the symptoms of autoimmune diseases.