The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) recently put out a call for the public to suggest “Visionary Ideas” that would help to shape the agency’s strategic planning process for the next five years. This annoucement set AARDA in motion – spurring us to inform the public of the issue and getting out the vote! We made this effort because while it is widely understood that environmental triggers are involved in the onset of autoimmune disease, not enough research has been done in this area. Because autoimmune diseases have been proven to be on the rise in the U.S. and around the globe, it is our belief at AARDA that environmental triggers in autoimmunity is an area on which NIEHS must focus more resources if we are to find answers.
We are proud to announce that for those hundreds of you who took the time to vote on AARDA’s “Visionary Idea,” your voices were heard and we were successful in securing the #2 spot out of over 130 ideas posted! This is quite an accomplishment, one that we could not have achieved without the assistance of AARDA supporters and advocates. We still have much work to do throughout this process to ensure that this idea does indeed translate into the dispersal of additional resources in the area of environmental triggers and autoimmunity, but this first step will ensure that our voices cannot be ignored.
Read AARDA’s “Visionary Idea” Submitted to NIEHS
A rapidly expanding body of science is showing that the environment we live in has many diverse effects on triggering the onset of disease in humans. Impacts on health go far beyond the conventional notion of “bad” substances in the environment causing disease while “safe” substances do not cause disease. The burgeoning field of epigenetics is demonstrating clearly that even supposedly benign chemicals can turn specific genes on or off. So, DNA is no longer the sole determinant of disease propensity. One must also look at which genes are active to predict a person’s future health.
Autoimmune disease research has clearly demonstrated that all types of chemicals and non-chemicals in the environment can trigger the onset of one or more of the genetically interrelated family of autoimmune diseases. Potential triggers include “harmless” chemicals, foods, medicines, and even sunlight, in addition to bacteria, viruses, and hazardous chemicals and pollutants. This is why identical twins growing up in the same household have only a 30-50% concordance for autoimmune diseases. If environment were not a major factor in autoimmune disease onset, we would expect to see concordances close to 100% since the twins have identical genetic make-up.
There is a growing body of scientific and clinical evidence of overlapping etiologies between immunodeficiency disease and autoimmune disease, and cancer and autoimmune disease. For example, skin cancers and certain autoimmune diseases can be triggered by exposure to sunlight. Another example indicative of overlapping disease triggers is the increase in both autoimmune thyroid disease and thyroid cancer after the Chernobyl disaster due to radioactive iodine exposure.
Therefore, AARDA strongly recommends that NIEHS take a leadership role in studying the full range of potential interactions between diseases (cancers, autoimmune diseases, etc.) and the much wider range of environmental triggers that we currently study. In addition to first order interactions, we strongly recommend that NIEHS study synergistic interactions among environmental factors and disease, e.g. while radon and cigarette smoke individually can trigger cancer, exposure to the combination synergistically increases cancer risk. The impact of the recommended research direction will have huge impacts on improving human health as we reach a more complete understanding of all the environmental triggers causing onset of many diseases.
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