Chlamydia ¡§ Infection and Heart Disease Linked Through Antigenic Mimicry.¡¨ Kurt Bachmaier

Chlamydia ¡§ Infection and Heart Disease Linked Through Antigenic Mimicry.¡¨ Kurt Bachmaier

























Nalin Perera
MCDB 167
Spring ¡¥99




INTRODUCTION:
Evolution of microbes has provided some advance features for them to adopt to their surrounding environment. One of these features is that their ability to disguise themselves as the host to survive from possible immunological responses. Due to this mimicry, immune cells can mistakenly act on body's own tissues. This is believed to be the way of getting inflammatory heart disease following Chlamydia infection. Chlamydia pathogen makes a peptide that mimics a portion of a heart muscle specific myosin peptide. This bacterial protein causes CD4+ T cells to recognize heart muscle specific peptide in association with MHC class II molecules and attack the heart muscle causing a severe inflammation. Eventhough the exact mechanism which this inflammation occurs is unknown, amino ac...