From the earliest recorded time in history man has tried to understand diseases. There has been much progress, but yet, there is much to learn. During the 1800's various the cause of infectious diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, typhus fever, syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever, and other infectious diseases have been discovered. The antibiotic principle was discovered in the early 1930's and improved upon ever since.
Galen, the famous Greek physician, who worked during Roman times, coined the word rheumatism. Rheum means phlegm in Greek and he knew that respiratory diseases caused a chronic, often painful disease for mankind.
The word rheumatism and the causes thereof was dealt with for hundreds of years and by the 1700's it was known (Encyclopedia Britannica, First Edition, 1771)that "a rheumatic fever" or "repeated neglected colds" (respiratory diseases), caused the chronic condition of rheumatism. Rheumatism features, bursitis, arthritis (yes,rheumatoid arthritis and the rest of the rheumatic diseases),tendonitis, and other somatic conditions. It also causes neuropathy since it mentions in the above article that acute rheumatic fever causes lumbago or back pain from sciatic nerve irritation. As a matter of fact the article mentioned indicates, concerning rheumatism: "The proximate cause is the inflammation of the lymphatic arteries"
If anyone cares to read "Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine" they will find, under the chapter on rheumatoid arthritis, that it features, arthritis, vasculitis, and neuropathy and even organ infarction, even myocardial infarction. A great part of the story of disease is published "right there". It became known in the 1930's that Streptococcus pyogenes, abbreviated Strep A, causes rheumatic fever. It also causes, mild respiratory infections (colds!) tonsillitis, sore throat, ear infections, skin infections (impetigo and erysipelas), puerperal fever, bronchitis, and pneumonia. It features the concomitant invasions by other microbes when one gets rheumatic fever, the highest grade clinical presentation of Streptococcus pyogenese disease. It has been understood, during the last thirty years, or more, that rheumatic fever is caused by an autoimmune response. What is not appreciated, however, is that Streptococcal infections, no matter how mild, cause an autoimmune response. Such a response is inflammatory in nature and it causes, first vascular inflammation, initially. I term it rheumatoid autoimmune vasculitis. Thus, the autoimmune disease caused by Streptococcus pyogenes is a systemic disease. All organs are affected by it and the nature of the tissue of the organ and the organ's function determines the nature of the abnormality.
Since an autoimmune diseases will be present from the first infection a person has and get worse as a person suffers more infectious episodes,it is naturally a life-long disease due to immunological memory. As such it will cause what we call aging. Aging takes place in a somewhat predictable pattern of organ damage: gall bladder inflammation, skin changes like seborrheic keratosis (age marks), wrinkle formation, periorbital edema, the rheumatoid diseases, arteriosclerosis, cancer, Alzheimer's, etc. Aging is simply the combined pathological affects of the autoimmune diseases mentioned.
I beleive that autoantibodies and other pathological autoimmunological elements can pass through the placenta so I think that we can be born with the autoimmune disease. Birth defects such as cleft palate, and spina bifida abnormalities are caused by such a pre-natal affect. Similarly, crossed eyes, decreased hearing, as birth defects can be caused by such a pre-natal autoimmune affect.
So, most of the idiopathic diseases: arteriosclerosis, cancer, endocrine diseases like diabetes, and hypothyroidism, rheumatic diseases, neuropathies, and the many, many more which are mentioned in all medical texts, are caused by the autoimmune response to Streptococcus pyogenes.
Central nervous inflammatory problems such as autism, ADHD, schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, anxiety, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases are also manifestations of it. One might think that a child with severe autism acts like a person with severe Parkinson's disease. Naturally, in all these diseases there are variations depending on how severe the autoimmune diseases is, if it was acute when young or chronic during ones life and if they had autoantibodies pass through the placenta from the mother.
Individuals with a high-grade case of rheumatoid autoimmune vasculitis will feature a decrease in the general immune response so that other microbes can cause clinical infections of opportunity. AIDS, various viruses,chicken pox (and herpez zoster), Legionnaire's disease, Lyme's disease, TB, and MRSA, and even Steptococcus toxic shock syndrome are caused by having a high-level autoimmune state. Perhaps malaria features the same relationship. Third world countries have a high level of Streptococcus pyogenes and rheumatic fever, as the highest grade clinical entity, is common. That makes it reasonable to think that the underlying autoimmune disease causes the other infections to be worse in those populations.
Rheumatoid autoimmune vasculitis causes some of the aspects of our personalities to be as they are. Asperger's syndrome can be expressed variously and it is common. Tourette's syndrome, for instance is common and is expressed at various levels from mild to severe. Men and women exhibit it somewhat different due to hormonal affects on the brain. Sometimes it is called the Type A personality. Often people with such a personality go a long way in life. They tend to be bright, aggressive, cagey, even immoral, and driven. The following people have, or had, the condition in a high grade fashion: Cheney, with all his cardiac and other problems no doubt has it. Elvis had it: he had chronic pain and died of heart disease. Marilyn Monroe had it. Kennedy had it. He had scarlet fever (same as rheumatic fever, nearly) at three and was an ADHD kid. Clinton has it. Of course the first and last person mentioned had by-pass surgery so as to survive the onslaught of the autoimmune disease I have mentioned and all the individuals were or are semi-moral because that is another factor of the disease: a subtle learning deficit if rheumatoid autoimmune vasculitis is at a high level during our formative years and since morals are learned phenomenon.
I have given a short outline of the systemic disease process caused by the autoimmune response to Streptococcus pyogenes. Naturally, it is a system-wide disease and affects all organs so it cannot be covered in a short article thoroughly. I am writing a book about it and it will be published soon.
