July 2005

How bacteria break B cell tolerance

IMMUNOLOGY

How bacteria break B cell tolerance

There is a lot of indirect evidence that microbial infections can initiate and/or worsen autoimmune disease. Autoantibody production during infection results from activation of low-affinity autoreactive B cells. But how this could lead to autoimmune disease is not clear.

In a study appearing online on July 21 in advance of print publication of the August 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Thierry Martin and colleagues from INSERM show in vivo that an experimental infectious disease creates the necessary and sufficient conditions to activate self-reactive B cells with significant affinity. This could drive them to mature into harmful memory B cells and lead to autoimmune diseases in susceptible individuals.

Title: Autoantigen, innate immunity and T cells cooperate to break B cell tolerance during bacterial infection

AUTHOR CONTACT:
Martin Thierry
INSERM, Strasbourg, France
Phone: 33(0)390243983; Fax: 33(0)390244016; E-mail: [email protected]

View the PDF of this article at: https://www.the-jci.org/article.php?id=24646