Diversity in Immune-Mediated Diseases

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Background

Immune-mediated diseases affect as many as 50 million people in the USA and more than 4% of the world population, with a substantial impact on quality of life and healthcare costs. Advances in research have helped to identify many of the biological mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of immune-mediated diseases and revealed innovative new strategies for their treatment, however barriers still remain
before these discoveries can improve the lives of all patients. Notably, there is still an imminent need for more ethnic diversity research for immune-mediated diseases, which can facilitate the generalizability of any information learned and the effectiveness of new treatment strategies for different groups of patients. For example, most clinical trials of immune-mediated diseases have focused only on European descent over other ethnicities. Research efforts are needed across all areas (clinical, translational and basic science), to address the various disparities in research and improve the diversity of insights into immune-mediated diseases.

Each person has a unique risk of developing different immune-mediated diseases and may respond differently to treatment, depending on their genetics and environment. Efforts have been made to take important factors into account such as patients’ ethnicity, gender, age and
socioeconomic status, to enhance understanding of immune-mediated diseases in underrepresented groups and better respond to individual patients and their backgrounds.

This Research Topic aims to bring together manuscripts, including original research, commentaries, perspectives, and reviews, on diversity in immune-mediated diseases. Example areas of research include, but are not limited to:

• Basic or clinical research in immune-mediated diseases to study health disparities.
• Studies describing lessons learned from research into underrepresented patient groups.
• Techniques for increasing diversity in recruitment and reducing barriers to participation in immune-mediated disease research studies.
• Statistical or computational methods or resources for handling and investigating genomics and health data from diverse populations.
• Identification of population-specific genetic risk factors, e.g. using genetic ancestry to identify disease mutations in underrepresented groups.
• Analysis of electronic health record data to improve the stratification of immune-mediated disease patients for precision medicine.
• Pharmacogenomic studies to reveal optimal approaches to treatment and/or avoid side effects for a diverse range of patients.

Keywords: Patient diversity, immune-mediated diseases, genomics, health records, treatment strategies

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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