Report on the 10th Dresden Symposium on Autoantibodies
held in Dresden on September 22–25, 2011

The goal of prediction of autoimmune diseases is prevention and/or early intervention to avert morbidity and mortality. In most diseases with an autoimmune pathology, a long prodrome is associated with the production of disease specific autoantibodies and may provide a window of opportunity to reverse the autoimmune process. However, large prospective studies are necessery to evaluate the risk of disease development in autoantibody positive persons. In type 1 diabetes, autoantibody assays make it possible to accurately identify people at risk of future disease. A similar development can be promised for rheumatoid arthritis. Therefore, both diseases may serve as models for prevention and novel treatment strategies. A prerequisite for prevention and curative therapy is the very early or even predictive diagnosis employing by biomarker analyses. The improvement, optimization and standardization of autoantibody determinations combined with evaluation studies play an important role in this process. This current volume will focus on different aspects of the pathogenesis, the prediction, novel treatment regimes and prevention of systemic and organ specific autoimmune diseases as well as autoimmune graft rejections. Rare autoimmunopathies such as autoimmune forms of thrombotic microangiopathies, nephropathies, myopathies and cardiomyopathies are also included.