The multifactorial etiology of autoimmune diseases

The etiology of autoimmune diseases remains a matter of debate. The respective roles of predisposition genes and environmental factors on the one hand, and the opposing effect of promoting and protective factors, on the other hand, are still ill-defined. A large amount of data recently obtained in either experimental models or in human diseases open new perspectives in the understanding of this etiology. We shall briefly review here some of these data.