Sex Bias in Autoimmunity: From Animal Models to Clinical Research and Applications
Description:... Autoimmune diseases are characterized by an abnormal and self-directed immune response leading to damage and dysfunction of multiple organs and tissues. Most autoimmune diseases are recognized as affecting disproportionately more women than men, suggesting a crucial role of sex hormones in modulating immune responses, with estrogens being postulated as enhancing autoimmunity and androgens playing a protective role.
It is also widely acknowledged that there is an overwhelming male bias in non-human (animal) studies of autoimmune diseases, while studies of both sexes in human research frequently fail to analyze results by sex. Underrepresentation of females in animal models of autoimmune disease is often justified by their intrinsic variability during the reproductive period, compromising the understanding of impact of the female sex chromosome and hormones on immune system functions leading to the high prevalence of autoimmune conditions.
This Research Topic will highlight the most recent advances in understanding the possible mechanisms for sex-specific differences in autoimmunity, with a specific focus on pre-clinical animal and human models of autoimmune inflammation, as well as on the most common sex specific differences in autoimmune diseases. The topic will emphasize advances in research exploring sex determinants in autoimmune rheumatic diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthritis, psoriatic arthritis, Sjӧgren's syndrome and further diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, asthma and more.
The present Research Topic will include both full length and short research communications, as well as perspective and review articles addressing various aspects of sex biased differences in pathogenesis, age at disease onset, clinical manifestations, disease course, treatment response, associated co-morbidities and overall survival across different autoimmune diseases.
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