van Eden W V
Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Zentralbl Bakteriol. 1993 Apr;278(2-3):377-82. doi: 10.1016/s0934-8840(11)80854-6.
The immune system is continuously exposed to a variety of microbial antigens. It is unavoidable that such antigens may resemble autoantigens, being present in the host. It has appeared now that the immune system is accepting recognition of such "mimicry" antigens and even may have developed a tendency to focus its attention to such antigens. This paper discusses the findings of immune responses to heat-shock proteins, as a family of proteins exhibiting extraordinary sequence conservation, creating a high degree of similarity between bacterial antigens and host antigens. On the basis of existing evidence, it is argued that immune responses directed at hsps are part of regulatory mechanisms which enable the immune system to safely contain potentially self-reactive lymphocytes. Furthermore, it is argued that by means of artificial immunization against hsps or selected determinants of hsps, a development of autoimmune diseases may be inhibited.
免疫系统持续暴露于多种微生物抗原。不可避免的是，这类抗原可能与自身抗原相似，存在于宿主体内。现在看来，免疫系统正在接受对这类“模拟”抗原的识别，甚至可能已形成将注意力集中于此类抗原的倾向。本文讨论了针对热休克蛋白的免疫反应的研究结果，热休克蛋白是一类具有非凡序列保守性的蛋白质家族，在细菌抗原和宿主抗原之间产生了高度相似性。基于现有证据，有人认为针对热休克蛋白的免疫反应是调节机制的一部分，该机制使免疫系统能够安全地控制潜在的自身反应性淋巴细胞。此外，有人认为通过针对热休克蛋白或热休克蛋白的选定决定簇进行人工免疫，可能会抑制自身免疫性疾病的发展。
