Infection and chronic rheumatic disease in children

It is clear that various microbial agents can cause acute and chronic rheumatic disease by several mechanisms, that different agents, some perhaps yet unknown, may cause the same disease in different patients, and that genetic factors are important, perhaps crucial, to this host response. In trying to elucidate how microbe-host interactions result in chronic rheumatic disease, interest currently centers on the roles of genetic factors, of bacterial infections including endogenous flora, of cross-reactive microbial and host antigens, and of the immune response to them. As in the past, progress in understanding these complex interactions will probably be incremental and intermittent.