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Rheumatoid Rescue of Misfolded Cellular Proteins by MHC Class II Molecules: A New Hypothesis for Aut

sb4

Senior Member
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Not sure if this study had been posted else where so decided to make a new thread.

It basically says misfolded proteins can be picked up by MHC class II proteins and presented to antigens generating autoimmunity.

This links with a recent paper indicating that MHC II was a / the problem in CFS. It links with the recent Dysautonomia conference where it's seems the opinion of the majority of researchers is that POTS is an autoimmune condition. It also links with the misfolded protein findings and why a small number of people do well on TUDCA.
 

sb4

Senior Member
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Very interesting thanks for posting. Are misfolded proteins contagious like other viral and bacterial infections?
I'm not quite sure what you are asking me Sidny. Misfolded proteins are, as far as my child tier grasp of the phenomena is aware, proteins that get bent out of shape for some reason.

Basically, proteins are chains of amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Your DNA contains the code the tells your enzymes which amino acids to use and in which order to make a specific protein.

So it might say that Protein X = Glycine + Alanine + Valine. In that order but what matters most is how they are folded. How they are folded determines how they function. Your endoplasmic reticulum (I think), is responsible for folding this.

I guess that if your ER is under stress it could fold proteins wrong. If proteins are subject to ROS/RNS it could misfold it. I would assume there are many other ways it can get missfolded.

When the protein is misfolded it needs to be destroyed as it doesn't have the function required but could also have negative function.

The paper is saying that these misfolded proteins could be taken up by MHC II, which usually picks up things like viruses and presents them to the immune system so that the immune system knows to kill the cell. So the misfolded proteins could cause antibodies against the correctly folded proteins as they are very similar. OR it could just cause cells to be destroyed because they are producing too many misfolded proteins.
 

percyval577

nucleus caudatus et al
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Are misfolded proteins contagious like other viral and bacterial infections?
Such protein would be (a kind of) a prion - the word is derived from protein and infection. Wikipedia has an article on that issue.

I wonder if it could be part of me/cfs outbreaks.

Underhill, 2015: "Myalgic encephalomyelitis, chroninc fatique syndrom: An infectious disease." (a very good article) does not mention this possibility. I think the known prions are transmitted only by nutrition, but I havn´t read again about it.
 
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