Potential autoimmunity-inducing cells found in healthy adults

It's not just patients with autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) that have self-attacking immune cells—healthy people have them too, according to a new report in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. In healthy adults, however, these cells are maintained in an 'off' state, perhaps explaining their innocuous nature. Whether these cells are the true predecessors of the self-attacking cells prevalent in lupus and RA and, if so, what prevents them from causing disease in everyone is not yet known. The new study will appear online on December 22nd.

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