Trevor G Marshall
Autoimmunity Research Foundation, USA
Title: Post-infectious autoimmune syndrome (PIFAS) as a predictive and a diagnostic factor to monitor chronic diseases of infectious and autoimmune origin (CDIO)
Biography
Biography: Trevor G Marshall
Abstract
Even though chronic inflammatory disease can comprise 70% of a nation's health budget, its molecular mechanisms have remained elusive. Without a clear pathogenic description, the available treatments for autoimmune, neurologic, and even psychiatric diagnoses have remained marginally effective. Preventative and predictive medicine has been stalled at the starting-gate. With meta-genomics, came the understanding that man is a super-organism, a community of thousands of species of microbes functioning in homeostasis with the human genome. Proteomics and Metabolomics have built on this foundation with the knowledge that even seemingly similar diseases result not from a single transcriptional dysfunction of DNA, but from thousands of dysfunctional interactions between the host and its micro-biome the ‘Interactome’. Antibodies are produced against components of the human micro-biome, so we all possess antibodies, even in the absence of disease. Antibody poly-specificity causes some of these to become auto-antibodies, with a definable autoimmune target. The ELI-Viscero panel, for example, measures 24 auto-antibodies which are part of a normal healthy human body, often called “natural” auto-antibodies. It appears that their proper homeostasis is essential to maintenance of a healthy body. Inflammation generated by other autoantibodies can lead, over time, to a diagnosis of chronic disease, or to an inflammatory cancer. Fortunately, the retargeting of an approved drug (Olmesartan Medoxomil) has allowed quick translation of immune-stimulative, rather than immunosuppressive therapies, resulting in a clinical paradigm shift, and improved opportunities for rapid molecular discovery.
