Autoimmunity to protective molecules (Re: What if......)

[Guest guest]

> Various proteins are capable of putting the brakes on inflammation.

> IL-10 is the obvious example, but there are others. So what if the

> autoantibody that some people generate happens to neutralize one of

> these " brakes " ?

Here's a related thought from Y Shoenfeld. Shoenfeld is a mile-tall

earth shaker in AI studies, editor of 6 billion symposium books and

author of 729 planets of papers (33 papers so far in 2007). Possibly a

good guy to have a pubmed alert on in order to keep track of trends

and developments in orthodox AI research. I think he seemed pretty

thoughtful to me when I read one of his papers, but I haven't read

much of him.

The importance (to SLE) of the complement proteins mentioned below is

nothing flimsy. Humans that are null at certain of the complement

genes have an SLE prevalance around 30% (sayeth Dubois). While this

association could possibly involve chronic infection, it's also far

from the only SLE-related factor which can be related to apoptosis.

Autoimmunity to Protective Molecules: Is it the Perpetuum Mobile

(Vicious Cycle) of Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases?

e Szyper Kravitz; Yehuda Shoenfeld

Summary

Apoptotic defects and impaired clearance of cellular debris are

considered key events in the development of autoimmunity, as they can

contribute to autoantigen overload and might be involved in the

initiation of an autoimmune response. The C1q protein and

mannose-binding lectin are activators of the complement system. The

pentraxins are a group of highly conserved proteins including the

short pentraxins, C-reactive protein and serum amyloid P, and the long

pentraxin family member, pentraxin 3, all of which are involved in

innate immunity and in acute-phase responses. In addition to their

role in innate immunity and inflammation, each of these proteins

participates in the removal of damaged and apoptotic cells. In this

article, we discuss the clinical significance of different levels of

these proteins, their role in the induction of or protection against

autoimmunity, and the presence of specific autoantibodies against them

in various autoimmune diseases.

[Guest guest]

On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 02:53:32PM -0000, wrote,

quoting the title of a new paper:

>Autoimmunity to Protective Molecules: Is it the Perpetuum Mobile

>(Vicious Cycle) of Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases?

This is amusing. Perpetuum mobile is usually translated as " perpetual

motion machine " , not " vicious cycle " . And, of course, perpetual motion

machines are impossible: whenever you see one demonstrated, you can be

sure that there's something somewhere secretly adding power to it. This

makes that title much more appropriate than intended: it suggests that in

autoimmunity, there's always a hidden germ involved, stoking the fire...