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Previous Volume 359:2837-2838 December 25, 2008 Number 26 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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Some families seem to be afflicted with more than their fair share of chronic illness — and sometimes more than one. Why does a particular disease develop in some members of a given family, whereas other members fall victim to apparently unrelated conditions? A simple model is that exposure to environmental risk factors in a genetically susceptible host leads to disease. A particular combination of genetic and environmental risk factors (together with chance and bad luck) leads to one disease, and another combination of factors leads to a different disease. Because members of the same family have exposure to many . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Source Information

This article (10.1056/NEJMe0809719) was published at www.nejm.org on December 10, 2008.

From the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston.

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