Theory 23/Sensitivity vs Specificity/Immune tolerance
Tolerance Trades Autoimmunity
The claim
The stringency of self-tolerance trades protection against autoimmunity for the breadth of the usable repertoire, so tighter tolerance leaves fewer defences.
01Mechanism
Deleting self-reactive cells removes useful cross-reactive specificities; loosening tolerance keeps them at the cost of self-attack risk.
02Prediction
Autoimmunity risk should track tolerance stringency.
03Refutation
The two uncorrelated would remove the trade-off.