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Infection and autoimmunity: a two-way relationship

Published on October 1, 2007 Reviewed on May 17, 2017   30 min

A selection of talks on Infectious Diseases

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0:00
Hello, I am Ricard Cervera. And I am consultant at the Department of Autoimmune Diseases at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. And I am going to talk, in the next minutes, on infection and autoimmunity. Some think that we believe it is a two-way relationship.
0:22
And why do we believe that this is a two-way relationship? Well, the relationship between autoimmunity and infection is certainly well-known. We all know that patients with autoimmune diseases have many infections. In other words, patients with autoimmune diseases are prone to develop infectious diseases, infections that range from mild to very severe infections. However, what is certainly very interesting and certainly challenging, is the possibility that infection can develop autoimmunity. Or in other words, that the origin, the cause, the etiology of autoimmune diseases can be an infection. And, in the next few minutes, we are certainly going to talk mainly on this specific aspect, that is the possibility that an infectious agent produce an autoimmune disease. And we will talk on two specific aspects. First, the already known relation between virus and autoimmunity. And second, the most challenging new hypothesis, the hypothesis of the antiphospholipid syndrome infections origin through molecular mimicry. Let us start with the first aspect, the relationship between virus and autoimmunity.

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Infection and autoimmunity: a two-way relationship

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