Immunology - Possible cause found for Lyme arthritis
Immunology - Possible cause found for Lyme arthritis
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DOI：
10.1126/science.281.5377.631
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发表时间：
1998-07-31
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
Dickman, S
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dickman, S
For many unlucky Lyme disease sufferers, the disease has a painful way of lingering. Weeks or months after the tick bite that transmits the disease-causing bacterium, some patients develop arthritis. Usually, the condition disappears following antibiotic treatments. But in roughly 10% of the patients, it persists after the infection has vanished. This has been a major mystery. As rheumatologist Brian Kotzin of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver asks:“Why this perpetual response in the joint if the bug is not there any more?” The answer, researchers now say, is an immune response that goes awry.On page 703, Allen C. Steere of the New England Medical Center in Boston, Brigitte T. Huber of Tufts University School of Medicine, and their colleagues report the discovery of a striking resemblance between a protein found on the outer surface of the Lyme disease organism—the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi—and a protein carried on human cells. This suggests that some people develop the persistent arthritislike condition because the infection triggers immune cells that attack both the spirochete protein and their own normal cellular protein.
