Teachers are more likely to die from an autoimmune disease than other professionals, according to US researchers. They hope the finding will boost efforts to unravel the causes of multiple sclerosis and other disorders in which the immune system turns on the body鈥檚 own cells.
Stephen Walsh and Laurie DeChello at Connecticut University, US, analysed death certificates of more than 860,000 鈥減rofessional鈥� Americans.
Overall, teachers were 13 per cent more likely to die from multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and other autoimmune disorders. But secondary school teachers aged between 35 and 44 were 143 per cent more likely to have an autoimmune disease listed on their death certificate. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a pretty substantial figure,鈥� says Walsh.
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Rheumatic fever is known to be triggered by infection with Streptococcus A bacteria. 鈥淭here is also a body of research that links infection with the Epstein-Barr virus with multiple sclerosis,鈥� Walsh adds.
Walsh and DeChello think that teachers鈥� relatively high exposure to a large number of children with a variety of viruses could explain their increased risk of death from an autoimmune disease.
Low risk
This finding could help researchers trying to identify the causes of multiple sclerosis, for example.
鈥淚dentifying populations with unusually high mortality rates from autoimmune disease provides us with a potentially fruitful setting in which to study risk factors,鈥� Walsh says.
He thinks the finding that secondary school teachers are at greater risk of dying from an autoimmune disease than infant school teachers is particularly interesting. Infection with Epstein-Barr virus, a member of the herpes family, is commonly seen in children of secondary school or college age but not in younger children.
Walsh stresses that a teacher鈥檚 overall risk of dying from an autoimmune disease is still low. However, autoimmune diseases are often not listed on death certificates. This means a teacher鈥檚 relative risk of developing multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis is likely to be even higher than the new data suggests.
Journal reference: Journal of Rheumatology (vol 27, p 1537)