Remember when Grandma used to say ‘don’t go out in the cold; you’ll get sick”? It turns out that she was right for a small number of people who have a condition called familial cold autoinflammatory syndrome (FCAS), in which individuals are afflicted by rash, fever, joint pain and flu-like symptoms after exposure to cold conditions as mild as an air-conditioned room or fall breeze.The disorder became a hot protocol for research labs in 2001 after investigators at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine discovered the mutated gene that caused FCAS*. Now, the same UCSD team reports in the November 13, 2004 issue of the journal Lancet, that they’ve found an effective treatment – one that inhibits an abnormal immune response that leads to symptoms in FCAS-affected patients.
