Sequencing Autoimmune Diseases
August 13, 2013 | Terry Sharrer
Using high throughput sequencing, scientists at Queen Mary University in London have carried out the largest sequencing study of human diseases so far. They focused on six autoimmune disorders (autoimmune thyroid disease, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis and Type 1-diabetes) looking for variants in 25 genes that are implicated in all of these disorders. 42,000 people were sequenced (17,019 were controls). Their findings: “These results suggests that risk for these autoimmune diseases is not due to a few high-risk genetic variations but seems rather due to a random selection from many common genetic variants which each have a weak effect.” MORE