Every Child is Unique: Addressing Childhood Immune Disorders
Asthma affects approximately 500,000 Canadian children, and more than 2 million Canadians of all ages. It typically begins in childhood and lasts throughout life. Its high prevalence, combined with significant asthma-related morbidity, leads to a heavy economic and human burden in Canada and worldwide. But what makes one child get asthma while others don’t?
Despite much effort, we still know little about how a healthy child is protected from infection, and even less about why some children develop devastating auto-immune disorders or life-threatening conditions like asthma.
As Canada Research Chair in Pediatric Precision Health, Dr. Stuart Turvey is trying to shed light on the central role the immune system plays in causing disease. He and his research team are harnessing the power of genomics to diagnose, treat and prevent pediatric immune disorders or primary immunodeficiency diseases (PIDs).
PIDs are a group of genetic disorders in which parts of the immune system are missing or dysfunctional. The study of PIDs has played a critical role in expanding our understanding of the immune system and has led to treatment strategies that have applications far beyond PIDs. But, despite our growing understanding of these diseases, many children remain undiagnosed.
As a practicing pediatric immunologist, Turvey’s research responds to the underlying cellular, molecular and genetic abnormalities responsible for disease. The knowledge Turvey and his team generate will help us understand how diseases develop and, ultimately, help identify new strategies to treat and even prevent these burdensome and often life-threatening conditions.