Rheumatoid Arthritis Health Center

Gene Study Probes 7 Common Diseases

New Insights: Type 1 Diabetes

Todd's subgroup looked for genes linked to type 1 diabetes. Genes linked to this disease, they found, affect immune regulation.

The message is that type 1 diabetes is a disease of the immune system where there is innate destruction by the cells of your own immune system of the cells that make insulin.

"Type 1 diabetes is a dysregulation of the immune system," Todd said. "These new genes, and the genes that we have known before, begin to give us a clue as to what has gone wrong. Our task in the next 10 to 15 years is to understand that and to turn the immune system away from this and toward healthy function."

New Insights: Crohn's Disease

University of Cambridge researcher Miles Parkes, FRCP, led the group that studied the genomics of Crohn's disease. Crohn's disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease.

A major puzzle in Crohn's disease has been whether the condition is caused by infection with unusual bacteria or simply by an abnormal immune response to the bacteria that normally live peacefully inside our intestines.

"The completely unexpected finding is that Crohn's disease is associated with a gene that affects how the body deals with bacteria that have got inside human cells," Parkes said at the news conference. "Prior to these genetic analyses, we had no idea this would be important.

"We are already aware of treatments that affect this pathway," Parkes added. "We can now begin to study these drugs in relation to Crohn's disease."

More Genetic Insights to Come

Exciting as they are, the current crop of findings are only the first harvest from a rich field.

"I think we are just scratching the surface," Donnelly said. "We expect over the next couple of years for the number of genes identified to grow substantially. What will happen, as these studies are extended, is our understanding of common diseases will change enormously over the next couple of years."

The findings appear in papers published in the June 7 issue of Nature and in the advance online edition of Nature Genetics.