Genetics of immune‐mediated inflammatory diseases

Immune‐mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) are characterized by dysregulation of the normal immune response, which leads to inflammation. Together, they account for a high disease burden in the population, given that they are usually chronic conditions with associated co‐morbidities. Examples include systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and type 1 diabetes. Since the advent of genome‐wide association studies, evidence of considerable genetic overlap in the loci predisposing to a wide range of IMIDs has emerged. Understanding the genetic risk and extent of genetic overlap between IMIDs may help to determine which genes control which aspects of the different diseases; it may identify potential novel therapeutic targets for a number of these conditions, and/or it may facilitate repurposing existing therapies developed originally for different conditions. The findings show that autoantibody‐mediated autoimmune diseases cluster more closely with each other than autoantibody‐negative diseases such as psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, Crohn's disease and ankylosing spondylitis which, instead, form a seronegative genetic cluster. The genetic clustering largely mirrors the known response to existing biological therapies, but apparent anomalies in treatment response are discussed.