"Molecular Mimicry"

[SOONERMOM]

I noticed that the MS Specialist that I saw back in January was featured in our paper this weekend.  He has 1700 patients and sees 12 new cases of MS each week.

http://www.newsok.com/article/keyword/3232402/?pg=1

At the end of the article (page 2), it talks about how the immune system starts recognizing myelin as part of a bacteria/virus that it has encountered before.  He calls this molecular mimicry and says that this happens to people predisposed to having MS.   I knew that the body attacked itself, but didn't reallize it was because it saw the myelin as a section of a bacteria/virus.  I know a lot of you have had EBV and might find this interesting.  OR, maybe I was the only one who hadn't put it all together--lol!

Stacey

[cjacks]

Thanks Stacey for the article.  

And thanks Bio for making the subject even clearer


I hope you both are well ..  and all forum members   :)

Jo

[biowham]

What he's saying is this: the part of a virus or a bacteria that your body's antibodies usually identify as "foreign" is called an "antigen." An antigen is really anything that an antibody will tag as needing attention. Your body can start making mistakes and accidentally make antibodies that see parts of proteins (like myelin) as antigens in a way similar to how it recognizes those parts of a virus or bacteria. When your body does this, it starts targeting attacks on those bits, which ends in damage to the cells that carry them, which means the tissues that make up those cells are damaged. There's a whole cascade/pathway that can result in a lengthy multi-level damage process in some cases, all triggered by this "mistaken identity" on the part of the antibodies.

It is possible that after an EBV event, during which the body derived antibodies specific to EBV, those antibodies--with possibly some very subtle changes because these things are always rearranging to anticipate the next assault--then turn around and mistakenly identify myelin proteins as EBV because of some pre-existing similarity between the two. There are, however, several other mechanisms by which antibodies might make this error (e.g., infection resulting in damage to the cell/tissue/protein, etc.).

Bio