Rather than signifying an immune system gone haywire, pioneering research reveals that autoantibodies are a biological prerequisite, and that natural autoimmunity is the master orchestrator of physiological homeostasis
When examining a lab report for autoantibodies, why is there a normal reference range? Classical immunology, adhering to the principle of “Horror autotoxicus,” argues that any level of antibody against self represents loss of self-tolerance and compromised immunoregulatory mechanisms. Although clonal deletion and anergy have previously been conceived as processes by which self-tolerance develops, these concepts fail to explain the prevalence of natural autoimmunity among healthy individuals (1). Novel research is elucidating that autoimmunity is a natural, common phenomenon, and that autoimmune disease occurs as a secondary response to tissue or organ injury.
Revisioning the Role of the Immune System: From Armed Forces to Housekeeper of Homeodynamics
Because immunology was born as an offshoot of applied microbiology, the foundational thinking of the microbiological discipline, which envisions the immune system as engaged in a permanent host struggle against alien invaders, has emerged as a cornerstone of immunology (2). In their seminal paper, Poletaev and colleagues (2012) argue that rather than the stalwart guardian, dispatched to protect the body against microbial breach and trespass of foreign entities, engaged in an ongoing territorial dispute for dominance, the immune system possesses housekeeping functions, maintaining homeodynamics against an onslaught of exogenous and endogenous forces (2). Unlike other messenger-mediated systems such as those orchestrated by neurotransmitters and hormones, the immune system embodies both the far-reaching dispersal and mobility to manage the genetic expression that governs development, growth, and aging of the organism (2).
