Antigen-based immunotherapy

EPD. LDI. LDA. ABI. ASI. SLIT. Welcome to immunotherapy’s alphabet soup! If you have an autoimmune disease, your immune system can't tell the difference between foreign invaders and healthy tissue. So it creates antibodies that attack both, causing inflammation, pain, and other symptoms people with invisible diseases know all too well. Traditional treatments suppress the immune system, often with devastating side effects. But what if there was a more targeted, less toxic approach to treatment? One that could attack the disease portion of your immune system but leave the rest intact, so your body could still fight off threats like infectious disease and cancer? That's the hope of antigen-based immunotherapy (ABI). ABI is a therapy designed to protect the immune system's helper cells and kill harmful ones, similar to immunotherapy for cancer or allergies. The challenge: autoimmune conditions are complex and even more difficult to manage. While some practitioners are giving versions of ABI to their patients (the alphabet soup above), much more research into its safety and efficacy needs to be done before it can be broadly endorsed. Bottom line: ABI is an exciting therapy that may offer those with autoimmune diseases a brighter future as researchers learn more.