Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
Linking Narcolepsy to the Flu? Researchers Make Progress Identifying Molecular Mimicry
[FONT="]Published on February 1, 2019
One day, Claire Crisp told her daughter to meet her in the car, but when Crisp walked outside she found her three-year-old, Mathilda, asleep, facedown on the pavement in front of the family?s minivan.
In the months that followed, the child collapsed on the kitchen floor, just missing the knives sticking up in the dishwasher. She fell asleep in the bathtub, in the swimming pool, and at the beach.
?We were deeply concerned,? says Crisp.
After a whirlwind of doctor?s visits and hospital stays, Mathilda was diagnosed in 2010 with narcolepsy. She was one of a wave of new cases in Europe during the global swine flu outbreak. There are still questions about whether the H1N1 Pandemrix vaccine could have contributed. Mathilda?s mother thinks so.
Now research from Stanford University sheds light on the mechanism by which either contracting the flu or receiving the swine flu vaccine could trigger an immune reaction that may lead to narcolepsy. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provides a specific example that demonstrates the theory in immunology called molecular mimicry, that autoimmunity is the result of the immune system mistaking healthy cells in a person?s body for proteins within infectious pathogens.
In this case, the research reveals the mechanism behind how the immune system can wreak havoc on the brains of people with narcolepsy, confusing a chemical in the nervous system that is responsible for wakefulness with a protein in some strains of influenza and in some versions of the swine flu vaccine.[/FONT]
Read more
[FONT="]Published on February 1, 2019
One day, Claire Crisp told her daughter to meet her in the car, but when Crisp walked outside she found her three-year-old, Mathilda, asleep, facedown on the pavement in front of the family?s minivan.
In the months that followed, the child collapsed on the kitchen floor, just missing the knives sticking up in the dishwasher. She fell asleep in the bathtub, in the swimming pool, and at the beach.
?We were deeply concerned,? says Crisp.
After a whirlwind of doctor?s visits and hospital stays, Mathilda was diagnosed in 2010 with narcolepsy. She was one of a wave of new cases in Europe during the global swine flu outbreak. There are still questions about whether the H1N1 Pandemrix vaccine could have contributed. Mathilda?s mother thinks so.
Now research from Stanford University sheds light on the mechanism by which either contracting the flu or receiving the swine flu vaccine could trigger an immune reaction that may lead to narcolepsy. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provides a specific example that demonstrates the theory in immunology called molecular mimicry, that autoimmunity is the result of the immune system mistaking healthy cells in a person?s body for proteins within infectious pathogens.
In this case, the research reveals the mechanism behind how the immune system can wreak havoc on the brains of people with narcolepsy, confusing a chemical in the nervous system that is responsible for wakefulness with a protein in some strains of influenza and in some versions of the swine flu vaccine.[/FONT]
Read more