The interaction of basic science and population-based research: autoimmune thyroiditis as a case history.

This brief commentary illustrates how laboratory research compliments populational research. The finding that susceptibility to autoimmune thyroid disease in animals is due to the additive effects of a number of unrelated genes led to a field study of a genetically predisposed population. In humans, as in animals, the major histocompatibility complex plays a preeminent role. Unlike many other autoimmune diseases, however, different HLA haplotypes predominate in different families, just as different H-2 haplotypes determine susceptibility in different strains of mice. Like the predisposed chicken, humans have a number of other genes that act independently to influence autoimmune susceptibility. Insight into the nature and action of the additional genes depends upon renewed studies of the animal models. Thus, we see a symbiotic relation between basic science as practiced in the laboratory and population-based research in the field.