Researchers at the University of Chicago tested whether reovirus, a common virus that usually causes no symptoms, could flip the immune system's tolerance to gluten by infecting the intestines of mice.
One reovirus strain, T1L, suppressed the regulatory immune cells that normally keep the body tolerant of dietary proteins, and pushed the immune system toward attacking gluten instead. The team then found higher levels of antibodies to reovirus in celiac patients compared with people without the disease, linking the finding back to humans.
Genetic risk for celiac disease, carried by most people who develop it, was known beforehand; this work suggested a viral trigger might be what tips a genetically susceptible person into actually developing the disease, rather than genetics working alone. The human comparison was observational antibody data, not proof the virus caused disease in those specific patients, and the causal chain was demonstrated only in mice.
Read the original study
Bouziat et al., Science, 2017 · doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5298
A virus, alongside gluten, may be the switch.
Source
- Bouziat, R., Hinterleitner, R., Brown, J. J., Stencel-Baerenwald, J. E., Ikizler, M., Mayassi, T., Meisel, M., Kim, S. M., Discepolo, V., Pruijssers, A. J., Ernest, J. D., Iskarpatyoti, J. A., Costes, L. M. M., Lawrence, I., Palanski, B. A., Varma, M., Zurenski, M. A., Khomandiak, S., McAllister, N., . . . Jabri, B. (2017). Reovirus infection triggers inflammatory responses to dietary antigens and development of celiac disease. Science, 356(6333), 44–50. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5298