The causation of autoimmune inflamintory arthritis and other autoimmune diseases by cellular stress

Worldwide, inflammatory autoimmune diseases are on the increase, proving a serious health burden and an economical problem to humanity. In Oman, the situation is not different. The work proposed here focuses on three such diseases, inflammatory arthritis (i.e., rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis), lupus, and autoimmune diabetes. These diseases have strong statistical associations with certain alleles of a number of genes, such as the class I and class II proteins of the HLA (the human MHC). Such associations allow the prediction of the course and severity of the diseases and are the gateway for biomedical research to the understanding of their molecular mechanisms. The known genetic associations of the inflammatory autoimmune diseases have been made mainly in populations of European descent, with strong indications that in other ethnicities, such associations may be altogether different. Thus, for Omani patients, these associations will need to be established. Starting from a cohort of patients from the Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH), we will establish genetic associations of the diseases and then proceed to elucidate the mechanism by which the products of these genes contribute to inflammation and autoimmunity. The work will be done at SQU and, wherever necessary, in the collaborating laboratory in Germany.