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. 2008 Feb;15(2):320-6.
doi: 10.1128/CVI.00381-07. Epub 2007 Dec 12.

Humoral immune responses of type 1 diabetes patients to Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis lend support to the infectious trigger hypothesis

Leonardo A Sechi  1 , Valentina Rosu, Adolfo Pacifico, Giovanni Fadda, Niyaz Ahmed, Stefania Zanetti
Affiliations

Humoral immune responses of type 1 diabetes patients to Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis lend support to the infectious trigger hypothesis

Leonardo A Sechi et al. Clin Vaccine Immunol. 2008 Feb.

Abstract

Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis is a zoonotic pathogen whose association with Crohn's disease in humans is under scrutiny. The objective of this work was to investigate its association with other chronic diseases such as type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), where the involvement of a persistent pathogen such as M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis could be the trigger. For this purpose, 59 diabetic patients and 59 healthy controls were investigated for the presence of antibodies against two recombinant proteins of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis and the whole-cell lysate. Extremely significant humoral immune responses to recombinant heparin binding hemagglutinin and glycosyl transferase proteins and the whole-cell lysates of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis bacilli were observed in T1DM patients and compared to those of healthy controls. Finding evidence of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis involvement in T1DM is perhaps a novel finding that might serve as a foundation stone in establishing an infectious etiology for T1DM.

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Figures

FIG. 1.
FIG. 1.
Evaluation of serum samples from diabetic patients (left column) and healthy donors (right column) against M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) lysate (A), GSD recombinant protein (B), and HBHA recombinant protein (C). Data are presented as values of the OD405 observed following ELISA, as described in the text. Data from a representative experiment out of three are shown. The median value for each group is indicated by a dark solid horizontal line.
FIG. 2.
FIG. 2.
Values of T1DM serum antibody titers against the different M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) antigens of patients divided by age: 18 to 28 years of age (group 1), 29 to 38 years of age (group 2), and 39 to 59 years of age (group 3). Data are presented as values of OD405 observed following ELISA, as described in the text. Data from a representative experiment out of three are shown. The median value for each group is indicated by a dark solid horizontal line.
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