Genetic component of childhood arthritis is assessed along with other childhood-onset autoimmune diseases
Scientists have calculated more precise measurements of heritability – the influence of genes – in nine autoimmune diseases that begin in childhood, they report in Nature Communications. It is hoped the research may strengthen the ability of healthcare professionals to predict a child’s risk for associated autoimmune diseases and lead to new treatments.
Many autoimmune diseases run in families and people often have more than one condition, so experts have long suspected the existence of an overlapping genetic landscape.
The team analysed data from over 5,000 children from around the world who were affected by nine autoimmune diseases and compared them to 36,000 healthy children.
The two diseases with the highest heritability were juvenile idiopathic arthritis and type 1 diabetes. Two forms of inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, had lower rates of heritability, in line with other research showing the influence of environmental factors such as gastrointestinal microorganisms.
Among disease pairs, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease had the strongest correlations, as did juvenile idiopathic arthritis and common variable immunodeficiency.
“The results from this study enable us to better understand the genetic component of these diseases and how they are genetically related to each other, thereby explaining why different autoimmune disorders often run in the same family,” explains Dr Hakon Hakonarson, who led the work. “We envision that we may be able to develop new therapies that may help significant subsets of patients across multiple autoimmune diseases who share the same genetic variants that result in perturbations of normal biological functions and autoimmunity. This is the foundation for precision medicine approaches.”
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Image credit: Sergey Galyonkin
