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More people around the world are suffering because their immune systems can no longer tell the difference between healthy cells and invading micro-organisms. Disease defences that once protected them are instead attacking their tissue and organs.

Major international research to fight this trend – including London’s Francis Crick Institute, where two world experts, James Lee and Carola Vinuesa,  help pinpoint the precise causes of autoimmune disease, as these conditions are known.

Autoimmune diseases range from type 1 diabetes to rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis. 

Fast-food diets lack certain important ingredients, such as fibre, and evidence suggests this alteration affects a person’s microbiome the collection of micro-organisms that we have in our gut and which play a key role in controlling various bodily functions,” Vinuesa said.

“These changes in our microbiomes are then triggering autoimmune diseases, of which more than 100 types have now been discovered.”

Both scientists stressed that individual susceptibilities were involved in contracting such illnesses, ailments that also include celiac disease as well as lupus, which triggers inflammation and swelling and can cause damage to various organs, including the heart.