Association of Cytomegalovirus Infection with the Sustenance of Autoimmune Response in Patients with Pemphigus Vulgaris

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Department of Laboratory Medicine, Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences, Albaha University, Albaha, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

In genetically vulnerable people, the cytomegalovirus (CMV) could be a major cause of autoimmunity. Emerging evidence reveals that CMV proteins are ubiquitous in autoimmunity-affected tissues and that autoimmune reactions may be sustained by both molecular mimicry and viral antigens. This study looked at how in-vitro CMV antigen stimulation affected T cell immunity and cytokine responsiveness in pemphigus vulgaris (PV) patients. Compared to healthy people, CMV antigen caused an increase in CD4+ T cells, notably the memory subset, and CD8+CD45RO+ T cells in PV patients. The CMV antigen induced an increase in the production of IL-4 and IFN-γ by PV PBMCs. The single nucleotide polymorphism IFN-γ +874 (rs2430561) was found to have a significant correlation with PV illness in our cytokine polymorphism analysis. IFN-γ may over-activate the immune system, resulting in antibody-mediated acantholytic disease via abnormal cell-mediated and humoral immunological responses. CMV infection may be a rare factor that sustains or exacerbates autoimmunity in PV disease in a non-specific way, especially in genetically predisposed hosts. 

Keywords

Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences. C, Physiology and Molecular Biology
Volume 13, Issue 2
December 2021
Pages 241-248

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