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Published at www.nejm.org December 10, 2008 (10.1056/NEJMe0809719)

	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

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

This article (10.1056/NEJMe0809719) was published at www.nejm.org on December 10, 2008. It will appear in the December 25 issue of the Journal.

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