New aspect on etiology and therapy of collagen diseases and inflammatory bowel diseases

Many clinicians have considered that collagen diseases (or autoimmune diseases) may be at activated immune states and have therefore used steroid hormones and other immunosuppressive drugs for the treatment. However, these diseases seem to be worsened by the treatment after all. The immunologic state similar to collagen diseases is also seen in aging, showing the appearance of autoreactive T cells and autoantibody-producing B cells. In fact, conventional lymphocytes rather decrease in patients with collagen diseases or autoimmune diseases and inversely granulocytes increase. In other words, these patients are at immunosuppressive states, showing the increase of granulocytes, extrathymic T cells, and autoantibody-producing B cells. Infections or stress may induce these immunologic states in the patients. Patients with inflammatory bowel diseases also show granulocytosis and lymphocytopenia but clinicians use NSAIDs and steroid hormones which have the activating potential of granulocytes. I propose here that clinicians should select the treatments of immunopotentiation rather than those of immunosuppression for these patients with collagen diseases or inflammatory bowel diseases.