[Stress proteins in medicine]

Abstract

The stress, or heat-shock proteins are essential for the homeostasis of living cells. Their role in the intracellular transport, refolding, or elimination of proteins becomes especially important after any unusual stimuli (stress) of the cell. This central role explains why stress proteins represent one of the most conservative structures of living cells. Human and bacterial stress proteins also show a homology as high, as 50%. This structural similarity links the immune responses against bacterial infections with a number of autoimmune diseases, such as lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis and insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, IDDM. In the end of our review we also discuss the possible role of stress proteins in protection against cardiac ischaemia and their putative role in aging.