The interplay of nature versus nurture in predisposition to the rheumatic diseases.

The revolution in microbiology and genetics that has transpired in the past few years has brought fresh debate in the question of the relative contributions of nature and nurture in susceptibility to the rheumatic diseases. For nature, a variety of immunologically relevant genes have been identified whose presence has been shown to be associated either with an increased risk for certain diseases or for complications or subsets thereof. For nurture, the role of infectious agents in disease triggering and modification has been found.