New therapeutic approaches to autoimmune disease

Conclusion Autoimmune diseases represent robust and inappropriate immune reactions arising out of a background of immunodefectiveness and immune dysregulation. For too many years our only approach to therapy has been generalized and nonspecific immunosuppression with powerful and highly toxic drugs.This chapter summarizes the first few attempts of an infant field attempting to use more specific immunomodulation as a new treatment to restore immune balance and turn off autoreactivity. Whether this immunopharmacologic approach will ultimately be successful is unknown. One must be optimistic and hope for success since current therapy falls far short of the mark.