HealingWell
Search Close Search
☰

Scientists discover how to 'switch off' autoimmune diseases

Support Forums
>
Ulcerative Colitis
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply
❬ ❬ Previous Thread |Next Thread ❭ ❭
Posted 9/3/2014 11:47 PM (GMT 0)
A novel approach. It doesn't specifically mention IBD, but...

 

Posted 9/4/2014 12:06 AM (GMT 0)
I'm no rocket surgeon, but it sounds somewhat promising to me! :)
Posted 9/4/2014 12:24 AM (GMT 0)
I wish someone would switch mine off right about now!!
Posted 9/4/2014 12:29 AM (GMT 0)
^Mine too!
Posted 9/4/2014 12:40 AM (GMT 0)
Wow. I'm very impressed. This hits home with me. My first autoimmune disease was a blood disease called ITP where your immune system destroys the platelets in your blood. Being an autoimmune disease treatments had several similarities to IBD (prednisone being #1). Nothing much worked on me but I saw a correlation to fall allergies to pollens and molds and every fall I would get much worse. After several years of fighting the disease I decided to look at the allergy angle myself. All my doctors laughed at me. After beginning allergy shots to desensitize my body to the pollen and mold allergies my ITP went away and I have been in remission for about 15 years now, continuing allergy shots the whole time. This is very promising.
Posted 9/4/2014 4:17 AM (GMT 0)
That's great to hear that you've got your other disease under control Gary! It sounds like it would be awful.

On topic: This sounds similar to another thread I posted a few days ago. The article in question was this...

www.healthline.com/health-news/designer-t-cells-quash-autoimmune-disease-061814

It was done by different researchers, it looks like. These scientists suppressed the mice immune system a lot, and then they injected a protein that they wanted the immune system to tolerate, and the immune system created regulatory T cells (suppress immune response) instead of effector T cells (these cause the inflammation) which initiated self-tolerance effectively reprogramming the immune system just for that autoantigen. So the rest of the immune system was perfectly okay. Sounds like those other researchers did something similar.

Anyway, we are only just discovering the intricacies of our immune system and scientists being able to reprogram the immune system of mice is just starting to happen. This means it'll be a long time before we see it applied to humans if it even works the same way in humans. But the important thing is that the proof-of-concept is there and no matter what, this is a great step towards understanding how to tame the immune system.

Thanks for the post!

EDIT: Huh, it looks like it's already pretty close to development for use in humans. Exciting! More narrow, targeted approaches to AI diseases is always a good thing.

Here's the study if anyone wants to look at it in more detail: www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140903/ncomms5741/full/ncomms5741.html

Post Edited (Tunnelvisionary) : 9/3/2014 10:41:27 PM (GMT-6)

Posted 9/4/2014 4:57 AM (GMT 0)
Looking forward to see how this progresses. I expect to be able to pick up my new medication next week, oh yes i.m kidding with you guys :> Still very promising tho, ty for posting it
Posted 9/4/2014 6:42 AM (GMT 0)
Wow.. makes me wonder how treatment for UC will look like in 10 years or so...
Posted 9/4/2014 7:16 AM (GMT 0)
Hmm is this the same as the Qu Biologics SSI? Or is it different? I am confused.
Posted 9/4/2014 7:38 PM (GMT 0)
Wow, thanks for sharing. It'd be great to have options for drugs that don't suppress our immune systems and all the possible side effects that can come along with it.
Posted 9/4/2014 7:46 PM (GMT 0)

pmitra0123 said...
Hmm is this the same as the Qu Biologics SSI? Or is it different? I am confused.

It does sound similar, can anybody explain in more detail or is just too vague (what we know about qu vs these guys)...
Posted 9/4/2014 8:21 PM (GMT 0)
It seems like the Qu Biologics SSI uses the immune system to remove the autoantigen that is causing the immune response, while these scientists are trying to make the immune system tolerate the autoantigen. The specifics are kind of lost on me for the Qu Biologic SSI but it seems like their mechanism of action is different.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong...

The scientists in the paper that this thread is about seem to be inducing tolerance to the autoantigen the same way allergists use pet dander or bee venom in people who are allergic to these things. Gradually escalating the exposure to them so the immune system just learns to ignore it.

In the paper I posted, scientists completely suppressed the immune system of mice and injected the autoantigen into the mice and the immune system created regulatory T cells that suppress the immune response to only that antigen. The mice needed one injection throughout the course of the study (unknown as of yet if they would need more, but for the duration of the study they only needed one) and the rest of the immune system remained intact.

So all these things sort of hope to suppress only the autoimmune response and keep the rest of the immune system in tact, they just go about it in different ways, it looks like.
Posted 9/4/2014 9:07 PM (GMT 0)
The problem with this and IBD, and really the whole IBD autoimmune thing at the moment is that IBD is organ specific - so inflammation occurs in the organ BUT without the presence of a "known" or even evidence of any specific auto antigen.

I believe that most mild evidence points to bacterial derived antigens - but no specific bacteria. Without knowing a specific target you can't really induce tolerance via the above.

In light of this I believe there was some recent progress in identifying some possible food antigens in Crohn's disease, but other than that it's just summed up that people with IBD are thought to react to bacterial derived antigens and because nothing is yet identified - they like to say it must be commensal bacteria. - So this is where the commonly read phrase "IBD is an abnormal reaction to normal bacteria" stems from....

Hopefully over time something would show progress, but personally, I seriously doubt it. Which to be perfectly honest sucks... I'd love to get a shot or to and then never have problems again. We all would!!

The above is also why it's now called auto-inflammatory vs. autoimmune...

EDIT - it sure would be nice if someone identified a target that could be treated though!

Post Edited (Canada Mark) : 9/4/2014 3:11:00 PM (GMT-6)

Posted 9/4/2014 9:44 PM (GMT 0)
Back in the 1990's or so there was a lot of work on oral tolerance induction.
There is a theory that we broke tolerance to our own bacteria.
Now I wonder if eating sterilized poo would induce tolerance to commensal colon bacteria.
Of course sterilization might render them somehow different.
Old Mike
Posted 9/4/2014 9:51 PM (GMT 0)

Canada Mark said...
The problem with this and IBD, and really the whole IBD autoimmune thing at the moment is that IBD is organ specific - so inflammation occurs in the organ BUT without the presence of a "known" or even evidence of any specific auto antigen.

I believe that most mild evidence points to bacterial derived antigens - but no specific bacteria. Without knowing a specific target you can't really induce tolerance via the above.


So it isn't established that the immune system is attacking the colon or the rest of the digestive system in IBD? What about antibody tests like pANCA?
Posted 9/4/2014 11:47 PM (GMT 0)
No it's not formally established. The autoimmune thing first came about based on peoples reaction to immune suppressing drugs. So the thought was that maybe the immune system is the problem and it's been built upon since then; though, really with very little progress. At the same time bacterial causes have been equally elusive. So the questions are more so "Is the immune system attacking the colon itself?, Is it inflaming to attack something in the colon? or is it inflaming in response to an attack by something?"

And this is what no one can figure out or prove in one specific theory.

Ulcerative Colitis does however show a lot of autoimmune or auto inflammation characteristics through various tests such as you mention. So who knows, maybe in the future someone will find the smoking gun. You can literally pick almost anything - especially immune responses like TNF-a, or IL-12 or IL-6, CHOP or Cox-1 & 2 like OM suggested or well, the list is seemingly endless, and if you search it you will find a study where it increased or decreased in IBD. But none of these show the root cause.

I hate to say it, but there is only pure "theories" as to what the cause of Crohn's disease and Ulcerative Colitis may be. There is no proof positive on one single thing.

That's the part that sucks. Not knowing.
Posted 9/5/2014 1:28 AM (GMT 0)
Ah, okay. I thought it was established that the colon was being attacked and that research was being done on bacteria to maybe figure out how to treat symptoms better. I didn't realize that they could potentially be trying to figure out what the immune system is attacking in UC. DSS models of colitis in rats would not be very helpful for that, would they?

It's just hitting me exactly why it is so complicated to treat IBD now. I thought that by not knowing the cause, they didn't know what triggers the autoimmune response (i.e. is it antibiotics? a certain diet? etc.) I didn't know that they don't even know what is being attacked.

Well when/if they can find the (auto)antigen in both CD and UC, that would be good news for us.

Post Edited (Tunnelvisionary) : 9/4/2014 7:45:09 PM (GMT-6)

Posted 9/5/2014 1:42 AM (GMT 0)
I definitely think that the immune system is attacking something other than the colon (probably one or more good bacteria) and that the colon is just collateral damage. But, exactly what it is actually attacking is not only elusive but probably different in everyone (my theory is different good bacteria). I have always thought that DSS models are almost worthless. They probably serve the purpose of figuring out different treatment options which control inflammation and that's about it. It never gets to the cause because we already know 100% what the cause of colitis in DSS mice is. Every once in a while we get someone post on here that they know the answer to UC and that it is simple, such as we have the dysbiosis and the simple solution is just to fix the dysbiosis (probably through diet). Not so simple.
Posted 9/5/2014 4:22 AM (GMT 0)
I forgot to mention as well, that in the case of Crohn's disease there are two types of bacteria that have been isolated from patients and transferred to mice and then the bacteria introduction into the mice has caused symptoms almost identical/if not identical to Crohn's disease.

These are mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) and Adherent Invasive E Coli (AIEC). MAP from chrons patients was isolated and was both orally administered and injected into mice with human intestine tissue grafted into them - the mice developed Crohn's disease symptoms in their human intestinal tissue. AIEC was administered and similar though not identical disease occurred though I'm not 100% how it was accomplished.

These are the only two I am aware of that show direct cause but they are debatable perhaps.

As far as Ulcerative Colitis is concerned I don't know of a bacterial study that has produced the same results. But many bacteria do cause bacterial colitis so maybe it's a combo of events.... Again no one knows unfortunately. Could be autoimmune or auto inflammatory or heck, maybe there's a viral cause... Lots of theories, no answers... Which sucks
Posted 9/7/2014 5:59 AM (GMT 0)
Yes as what tunnelvisionary, and CM said: with colitis no antigen has been found. Unlike with MS and other autoimmune diseases.
I think the other strategy of turning T cells into regulatory ones is more effective for us.

The former reminds me of this website i came across a while ago which sells homeopathic preparations for UC. On the ingredients list it said: "sigmoid colon x10, descending colon x10, transverse x10" etc. with the 10 being the dilution factor.
Posted 9/7/2014 4:59 PM (GMT 0)
A large percentage of the immune system is in the gut...
other immune diseases can cause gut issues (Cystic Fibrosis, one example...Cystic fibrosis causes thick and sticky mucous throughout the body, leading to serious, chronic and systemic health problems. Along with breathing and lung problems, bowel symptoms are a leading health complication related to cystic fibrosis. This sticky mucous blocks tubes and ducts leading to the pancreas, which prevents essential enzymes from reaching the intestines. These enzymes are essential for the absorption of protein and fats in the body. Therefore, someone with untreated cystic fibrosis has an abundance of fats and proteins in their bowel. This is the cause of gastrointestinal or bowel symptoms in people with cystic fibrosis.)

I understand that researchers didn't all agree whether IBD immune systems were over or under active, therefore they dubbed our immune systems as being malfunctioned...and I believe it is. If they can fix the immune system, then they can likely fix IBD is what I strongly believe, until then, they are simply coming out with more band-aid meds and that isn't getting those of us that are suffering any farther ahead with our IBD.
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply