Department of Microbiology, Jan Kochanowski University, Swietokrzyska 15, 25-406, Kielce, Poland.
Institute of Organic Chemistry, Lodz University of Technology, Zeromskiego 116, 90-924, Lodz, Poland.
J Pept Sci. 2018 Jun;24(6):e3084. doi: 10.1002/psc.3084.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune inflammatory disease. Early diagnosis can prevent joint erosion. However, available biomarkers do not always allow for clear distinction between RA and non-RA individuals. It has become known that bacteria/viruses are among the environmental triggers that initiate RA via multiple molecular mechanisms. Thus, to better understand the role of bacteria in RA, we synthetized 6 peptidomimetics of bacterial ureases' flap region. These peptides were then used to distinguish RA patients from healthy people sera by immunoblotting. Most patients' sera were bound to peptidomimetic characteristic for Enterobacter sp. and Klebsiella sp. flap urease. We also found similarities between peptidomimetic sequence and human proteins connected with RA. This pilot study suggests that bacteria may trigger RA via mechanism of molecular mimicry of urease to host proteins and ureases flap peptidomimetics may be potential candidate as a new additional diagnostic test.
类风湿性关节炎（RA）是一种自身免疫性炎症性疾病。早期诊断可以预防关节侵蚀。然而，现有的生物标志物并不总是能够明确区分 RA 和非 RA 个体。人们已经知道，细菌/病毒是通过多种分子机制引发 RA 的环境触发因素之一。因此，为了更好地了解细菌在 RA 中的作用，我们合成了 6 种细菌脲酶瓣区的肽模拟物。然后，通过免疫印迹法，这些肽被用于区分 RA 患者和健康人血清。大多数患者的血清与肠杆菌属和克雷伯氏菌属瓣脲酶的肽模拟物结合。我们还发现肽模拟物序列与人 RA 相关蛋白之间存在相似性。这项初步研究表明，细菌可能通过脲酶对宿主蛋白的分子模拟机制引发 RA，而脲酶瓣肽模拟物可能是一种新的潜在候选诊断测试。
