| Summary: | 博士 === 國防醫學院 === 生命科學研究所 === 89 === Immune system regulates our defense against exogenous invaders and protects us from illnesses induced by these exogenous pathogens. However, sometimes, the immune system may go wrong and then, instead of providing protection, it may cause serious problems leading to a variety of diseases called autoimmune diseases. Since the cause of dysregulation of our immune system is not quite understood, the therapeutic effects are difficult to achieve although many years already went by and a good research budgets were input. In addition, these autoimmune disorders may not exist alone and a combination of several autoimmune diseases is common. Although the etiologies of these autoimmune diseases are not clear, several characteristics of these illnesses make them an interesting field to look at. These interesting features include (1) major organ involvement (2) the crucial inflammatory cells involved are T lymphocytes (3) disease appears waxing and wanning. Currently acceptable therapies for autoimmune diseases are mainly based upon a combination of several disease modifying antirheumatic drugs with different mechanisms. No single agent has been shown to be definitely beneficial in the treatment of these illnesses. Although many uncontrolled therapeutic experiences using Chinese antiruehmatic drugs have been obtained after few decades of clinical trials, the theapeutic mechanisms are still not clear. Based upon this, to study the immunomodulatory mechanisms of Chinese antiruehmatic herbs on the therapeutic effects on autoimmune diseases becomes very interesting and very necessary for the immunologists or rheumatologists here. I therefore spent my PhD research career to dissect the mechanisms regarding how antirheumatics may possibly regulate the human T cell function. The success of my sudy not only unveils the mechanisms of antirheumatic herbs, it also brings a possibility of serious consideration of combining both Westerna and Chinese antirheumatic drugs in the therapy of autoimmune diseases.
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