IMMUNODIETICA: TOWARDS AN IMMUNOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE ROLE OF DIET IN AUTOIMMUNITY
- Leonardo M. Ferreira, United States of America
Abstract
Background and Aims
Autoimmunity affects 50 million people in the United States alone. An estimated 70% of autoimmune disease cases are due to environmental factors. Diet is a risk factor for and modulates the severity of several autoimmune disorders. Yet, interactions between diet and autoimmunity in humans remain largely unexplored, particularly the impact of immunogenetics, i.e. presence of certain human leukocyte antigens (HLA) in individuals, in this interplay. Here, we aimed to systematically interrogate commonly consumed animals and plants for the presence of protein epitopes previously implicated in human autoimmune disorders and determine their tissue expression patterns and binding to autoimmune disease-associated and -protective HLA molecules.
Methods
We aggregated all epitopes implicated in 70 human autoimmune diseases (www.iedb.org) and cross-referenced them with epitopes in 24 organisms. In addition, we annotated the tissue expression pattern of these epitopes and assessed their binding to different HLA alleles in silico.
Results
The species investigated could be divided into three broad categories regarding their content in human autoimmune epitopes, which we represented using a new metric, the Gershteyn-Ferreira index (GF index). Strikingly, pig contains a disproportionately high number of unique autoimmune epitopes compared to all other species analyzed. Interestingly, pig epitopes implicated in multiple sclerosis (MS) were preferentially expressed in nervous tissue and bound to MS-associated HLA alleles.
Conclusions
Immunodietica uncovers a new link between pork consumption and autoimmunity in humans and lays the foundation for future studies on the impact of diet on the pathogenesis and progression of autoimmune disorders.