Medical mysteries part two
Posted: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 1:59 PM by Barbara Raab
By Robert Bazell, Chief science editor
For many young scientists this is a very distressing time. The federal government’s support for basic research through the National Institutes of Health has slowed vastly from what it was a decade ago. As a result, many people who were looking to careers in basic science simply can’t find them.
I mention that because tonight’s story in our series Medical Mysteries about auto-immune diseases looks at rheumatoid arthritis where there is some success. To be sure, there is not a cure. But doctors have more and more drugs for treating RA, an auto-immune disease that strikes the joints and other parts of the body. RA afflicts more than two million Americans, 70 percent of them women, and can leave people horribly crippled if not treated effectively.
The discovery of those drugs is the result of basic research into the immune system, the exquisitely complex set of blood cells and antibody proteins that defends against diseases. Chemicals in our body called cytokines are the signaling mechanism of the immune system –- setting off the alarm of an invasion of viruses or bacteria. As basic researchers have discovered more of those cytokines and how they direct the immune system, they have been able to design drugs to selectively dampen the immune response in people with auto-immune diseases, and lessen the disease.
Of course if the basic research slows, so will the drug discovery that for this disease has been growing ever more successful.
For more information about rheumatoid arthritis I would recommended starting with the Arthritis Foundation website.
