5.5 - 5.6 Immune Mediated Injury Flashcards
What is primary immunodeficiency?
- Caused by inherited defect in the immune system
- Innate host defenses (complement, phagocytes, NK-cells)
- Adaptive immunity (humoral or cellular)
What is secondary immunodeficiency?
- Caused by disease:
- Infection
- Malnutrition
- Ageing
- Immunosuppression
- Chemotherapy
- Manifests as increased susceptibility to infection and predisposition to some cancers.
- E.g. Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) a disease caused by Human immunodeficiency virus I (HIV-I)
- Infection and depletion of CD4+ T cells
- Profound immunosuppression
- Opportunistic infections
- Secondary neoplasms
- Neurologic manifestations
What are the mechanisms of CD4+ T cell loss mediated by HIV-1?
What is the clinical course of a HIV infection?
What is the role of tolerance in autoimmunity?
- Immunological tolerance is when lymphocytes are unresponsive to antigen
- Self-tolerance – the lack of an immune responsiveness to one’s own tissue antigen – is a fundamental property of the immune system
- A breakdown in tolerance results in self-antigens becoming a target for the host immune response
- This is the basis of autoimmune disease
Where does tolerance occur?
- Central tolerance
- Central lymphoid organs (thymus and bone marrow)
- Immature lymphocytes that recognize self-antigen are killed or rendered harmless.
- Peripheral tolerance
- Occurs in periphery
- Tissues and lymph nodes
What happens in central tolerance for T cell tolerance?
- In developing T-cells, random somatic gene rearrangements generate diverse TCRs
- APC present self-antigens present in thymus in conjunction with MHC to immature CD4/CD8 thymocytes
- No signaling = apoptosis
- Weak MHC-reactivity = survival and maturation
- Strong MHC/self-peptide = Apoptosis
What is the role of tissue specific proteins AIRE in central T cell tolerance?
- AIRE – autoimmune regulator
- Transcription factor that induces expression of peripheral tissue antigens in the thymus
- Mutations in aire give rise to autoimmune disease
What is the efficiency of central T cell tolerance?
- Central Tolerance not 100% efficient
- Despite the AIRE not all self-antigens are present in the thymus
- Self reactive T cells can cause tissue injury unless they are deleted/suppressed in periphery
What are the four mechanisms of peripheral tolerance?
- Anergy
- Suppression
- Deletion (activation-induced cell death)
- Ignorance
What is anergy in T cell tolerance (peripheral tolerance)?
- When the T cell cannot respond to antigen
- T-cells require two signal for activation
- Recognition of peptide antigen with self-MHC
- Binding of CD28 to co-stimulatory molecule (B7)
- T-cell encounters self-antigen
- Co-stimulatory molecule not expressed on APC
- T-cell inhibitory receptor (CTLA-4) competes for B7
What is suppression in T cell tolerance (peripheral tolerance)?
- Tolerance due to regulatory lymphocytes (Treg)
- Express CD25 and transcription factor FoxP3
- Treg-cells recognize self antigen in the thymus and inhibit self reactive T cells that recognize the same antigen in the periphery
- Secretion of cytokines that dampen T cell response
What is deletion in T cell tolerance (peripheral tolerance)?
- Activation-induced cell death:
- Strong or repeated self-antigen recognition
- Engagement of death receptor Fas or expression of pro-apoptotic members of the Bcl family
- Apoptosis of mature lymphocytes
What is ignoral in T cell tolerance (peripheral tolerance)?
- Antigens are hidden from circulation (blood and lymph)
- Immune privileged site
- Some intracellular antigens
- Eye or testes immune cells do not get into those organs. Could recognise testes antigen but would never see it
What is gene tolerance for B cell tolerance (central tolerance)?
- B-cell encounters strongly cross- linking antigen in bone marrow
- Autoreactive B-cell rescued by gene rearrangement
- Receptor editing
- Deletion of self-reactive light chain gene and replacement
What is deletion as a means of B cell tolerance for central tolerance?
- B-cell encounters strongly cross-linking (multivalent) antigen in bone marrow
- Rescue by gene rearrangement fails
- Autoreactive B-cell eliminated by apoptosis
How is anergy seen in B cell tolerance (central tolerance)?
- B-cell encounters weakly cross-linking antigen of low valence in bone marrow
- Permanently unresponsive (anergic) even in the presence of T-cell help (tolerance)
- Do not survive
How is ignorance seen in B cell tolerance (central tolerance)?
- B-cells do not sense self-reactive antigen
- Low access
- Weak binding
- Low concentration
- Can react under certain conditions
Why is B cell tolerance less efficient than t cell tolerance?
- B cell tolerance is less efficient than T cell tolerance
- Relies upon efficient T cell tolerance
- Relies on lack of T helper cells specific for self antigens
What are the two mechanisms of causing autoimmunity?
- Inheritance of susceptibility genes
- Environmental triggers that promote activation of self-reactive lymphocytes.
What are the genetic factors that predispose one to autoimmunity?
- Disease runs in families
- Affects monozygotic twins > dizygotic twins
- Usually multiple genes, although can be caused by a single gene defect
- Genes that affect self tolerance:
- HLA genes
- Non-MHC genes
- Autoantigen availability and clearance (ie apoptosis)
- Control of lymphocyte activation (ie IL-2R, CTLA-4)
- Development – AIRE, responsible for presentation of peripheral tissue antigens in the thymus
What autoimmune diseases are linked to MHC genetic factors?
- Human MHC genes (HLA) are highly polymorphic
- Some autoimmune diseases are associated with HLA locus
- Thought that MHC genotype determines ability of T cells to respond to antigen
What changes to tissues are seen in autoimmunity?
- Inflammation
- May activate anergic autoreactive bystanders cells
- Secrete cytokines that impair regulatory T cells
- Tissue injury
- Tissue antigens may be altered by infection
- Cryptic epitopes may be exposed by infection
- Molecular mimicry
- Microbial antigens with cross-reactivity with autoantigens
- Drugs and toxins
- Drugs and toxins can bind self antigens so that they are recognized as foreign
Does all autoimmunity lead to disease?
- Not all autoimmunity leads to autoimmune disease
- Transient anti-nuclear antibodies are produced after viral infections, with no outcome in most cases
- Increase in the incidence of autoantibodies with increasing age - most show no evidence of autoimmunity
- Experimental models of autoreactivity often need triggering events to develop disease
When does autoimmune disease occur?
Autoimmune disease occurs when immune response to specific self-antigens (autoimmunity) contribute to the ongoing tissue damage that occurs in that disease
What is the difference between organ specific and systemic autoimmune disease?