Mucosal Immunity Flashcards
What are the 2 ways of transporting substances across the mucosa?
Transcellular - across the cell
Paracellular - between the cells
What are the distinctive features of the gut mucosal immune system?
- Intimate relationship between mucosal epithelia and lymphoid tissue
- Organised lymphoid structures unique to mucosal sites
- Specialised antigen uptake mechanisms
- Activated/memory T cell predominate “natural” effector /regulatory T cells
- Active down regulation of immune response
- Inhibitory macrophages and tolerising dendritic cells
Why is the gut a common site of HIV infection?
Because there are so many activated T cells
What are peyer’s patches?
essentially the small intestine lymph node
What is the purpose of the germinal centres in the peyer’s patches?
Makes a lot of immunoglobulin to make a lot of antibodies from the gut
What are the peyer’s patches covered by?
epithelial cells called M cells which have a characterisitic membrane ruffles - microvilli are present on these cells
What is the function of the M cells?
The M cells take up antigens by endocytosis and phagocytosis. The antigen is then transported across the M cell in vesicles and released at the basal surface
The antigen is bound by dendritic cells which activate T cells
Within the rest of the mucosa what are the 2 parts of the mucosal immune system?
cells of the lamina propria
the immune cells of the epithelial layer (intraepithelial lymphocytes IEL) - these are CD8+ T cells
What are the proportions of antibodies within the gut?
IgA - 80% which is dimeric
IgM 15%
IgG 5%
What are the types of immune cells found within the epithelial?
90% T cells with 80% CD8+ (kill cells)
they are in the activated state and have a restricted antigen receptr repertoire
the AE:B7 anchors thee cell to the epithelium
there are 2 types which have different recognition mechanisms
What is important about immunological suppression within the gut?
The gut’s default is to not react you have to push it quite hard, there is also something called oral tolerance where the immune system response is switched off to particular antigen
The main responses which are inhibited are T cell and IgE mediated responses - more than IgG
Dysregulation of the immune response through HIV infection is due to…
Damaging the T cells and spreading the infection through the different immune cells, When dendritic cells bind to the CD4+ cells they pass the HIV
Examples of primary immunodeficiency which cause mucosal immunity problems
Selective IgA deficiency CVID X linked Agammaglobulinaemia CGD SCID
What are the characteristics of selective IgA deficiency?
1:600 people
2/3 asyptomatic
symptomatic remainder get recurrent sinopulmonary infections
Coeliac disease 10x more likely
What is the immunopathology coeliac disease?
T cell/intraepithelial lymphocyte mediated
Gamma interferon from Gluten specific T cell activate epithelial cells which produce IL-15 which induces proliferation and activation of IEL
Both T cells and IEL can then kill epithelial cells
What is the food trigger of coeliac disease?
The gluten in wheat/rye/barley acts as the auto antigen which triggers the immune response and the symptoms associated with the disease
What is the tigger for getting coeliac disease?
it is genetically linked but people aren’t born with it the trigger is unknown but speculated to be enteric viruses