About the Special Issue

Autoimmune diseases, characterized by the immune system’s attack on healthy tissues, affect over 5–10% of the global population, with conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), sjogren syndrome, vasculitis, myositis, and multiple sclerosis posing significant clinical and societal burdens. Despite advances in biologics and immunomodulatory therapies, the disease control in many patients remain unsatisfactory, highlighting the need to unravel novel pathogenic drivers and develope new therapeutic strategies. Emerging evidence underscores the gut and tissue-specific microbiomes as critical regulators of immune homeostasis, with dysbiosis implicated in triggering, exacerbating, or modulating autoimmunity. This special issue seeks to explore the bidirectional interaction between microbial communities and immune dysregulation, bridging mechanistic insights to translational innovations for diagnostics, prevention, and treatment.

Scope and Topics:

We welcome submissions addressing, but not limited to:

1). Mechanistic Insights:

• Microbial regulation of immune tolerance (e.g., Treg/Th17 balance, B-cell activation).

• Role of virome, mycobiome, and archaea in autoimmune pathogenesis.

• Epigenetic modifications driven by microbiome-derived metabolites (e.g., SCFAs, bile acids, tryptophan derivatives).

2). Clinical and Translational Research:

• Microbiome signatures as biomarkers for disease stratification, progression, or treatment response.

• Therapeutics: Probiotics, prebiotics, phage therapy, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), and dietary interventions.

• Impact of antibiotics, environmental toxins, and lifestyle on microbiome-immune crosstalk.

3). Emerging Frontiers:

• Sex-specific microbiome interactions in autoimmunity.

• Pediatric autoimmune diseases and early-life microbiome development.

• CRISPR-engineered microbes, synthetic biology, and precision microbiome editing.

• Multi-omics approaches (metagenomics, metabolomics) to decode host-microbe networks.

4). Population and Global Health:

• Geographical, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in microbiome-autoimmunity relationships.

• Microbiome modulation in low-resource settings: Challenges and innovations.

This special issue will provide a platform for interdisciplinary research spanning immunology, microbiology, computational biology, and clinical medicine. By uniting diverse perspectives, we aim to accelerate the translation of microbiome science into therapies for autoimmune conditions. 

Exploration of Immunology’s open-access format ensures global visibility. Submit your work to contribute to this important topic advancing the fight against autoimmune diseases.

Keywords: Autoimmune diseases, Microbiome, Dysbiosis, Immune tolerance, Microbial metabolites, Precision medicine, Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), Environmental triggers, Multi-omics, Global health

Call for Papers