Russian and European geneticists have found that changes in the human genome, which previously appeared for the immune system’s fight against dangerous infections, contribute to the development of asthma, type 1 diabetes, psoriasis and other allergies and autoimmune diseases.
Scientists hypothesize that the high susceptibility of humans to these diseases is due to the fact that variations in genes associated with them, which increase the activity of immunity, helped our ancestors to survive in the distant past.
It was found that more than 30% of the studied variations in the structure of genes associated with the development of autoimmune diseases appeared in the human gene pool as a result of natural selection aimed at improving the ability of the human body to resist infections.
