Sodium chloride drives autoimmune disease by the induction of pathogenic TH17 cells.

Increased salt concentrations are shown to induce murine and human TH17 cells by a mechanism that depends on activation of p38/MAPK, NFAT5 and SGK1; mice kept on a high-salt diet develop a more severe experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis due to increased induction of TH17 cells.