May 17, 2012
Many autoimmune diseases affect women more frequently than men. The ratio of affected women to affected men are given above for several autoimmune diseases on which 23andMe reports. (Source: American Autoimmune Related Disease Association, Inc.) There are many wonderful things about being a woman, but our [...]
September 8, 2011
By Bethann Hromatka Autoimmune diseases are caused by an overactive immune system. In these diseases, white blood cells, which normally help your body fight infections, ramp up and attack your own cells and organs. These disorders can be very debilitating and are relatively common, affecting roughly 1 in [...]
September 6, 2011
Scientists know that there isn’t one cause for multiple sclerosis (MS), but understanding this complex autoimmune disease has vexed medical researchers for years. In the largest MS study to date, researchers recently identified 29 new genetic variants associated with the disease in people of European [...]
April 28, 2010
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system, causing unpredictable and varying symptoms that differ from person to person. About 1 in 700 people in the United States is affected by the disease. Because MS often runs in families, it's thought that there is a [...]
December 15, 2009
Multiple sclerosis (MS) afflicts the central nervous system, causing unpredictable and varying symptoms that differ from person to person. About one in 700 people in the United States is affected by the disease. Although there is currently no cure for MS, there are treatments that can slow the progression of [...]
October 30, 2009
New research suggests that your skills behind the wheel may be affected by your genes. To better understand the effects of a variant in the BDNF gene on motor skills learning, Steven Cramer and colleagues at UC Irvine tested 29 subjects in a driving simulator. Their results, published in the journal [...]
July 7, 2009
There's a high likelihood that a disease of some sort affects you or one of your relatives — every family seems to have ripples in its gene pool that define and shape its health dynamics. Your family might have a propensity for rheumatoid arthritis or a particular type of cancer. Whatever it is, there [...]
February 5, 2009
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a common inflammatory disease that leads to the destruction of the insulating coating that surrounds nerves in the brain and spinal cord. Without this insulation, the electrical impulses the nerves are supposed to carry between the brain and rest of the body get confused or lost [...]
