Allergies and autoimmune diseases can be cured forever: scientists have found a way

With incessant allergies, life-threatening anaphylaxis, and debilitating autoimmune diseases, the body's system that is supposed to protect us can create problems when it fails. Now humanity is one step closer to solving these problems in a completely new way. Writes about it science alert.

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Using transgenic mice and cells taken from human tonsils, researchers have found evidence of how our bodies can defend against problems that lead to conditions such as asthma, food allergies and lupus. They discovered a protein called neuritin, made by immune cells. It acts as a built-in antihistamine.

“There are more than 80 autoimmune diseases, and in many of them we find antibodies that bind to our own tissues and attack us, rather than targeting pathogens like viruses and bacteria,” explained immunologist Paula Gonzalez-Figueroa from the Australian National University (ANU). “We found that neuritin inhibits the formation of foreign plasma cells that produce harmful antibodies.”

We've known for some time that the immune system's regulatory T cells suppress homing antibodies and immunoglobulin E (IgE)—antibodies that trigger the release of histamines in response to allergies—but we didn't know how. It took Gonzalez-Figueroa and her team five years to solve this problem using genetically engineered mice and lab-grown human cells.

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During a normal reaction, the human body produces a special class of cells called follicular regulatory T (or Tfr), pumps out neuritin, which reduces IgE production (this is its antihistamine effect) and suppresses other processes that send plasma cells to the surface.

Mice unable to produce neuritin had an increased chance of dying from anaphylaxis when injected with albumin. These mice, genetically bred to lack neuritin-producing Tfr cells, raised a population of defective plasma cells early in their lives. These are cells that have produced autoantigens.

But when the team treated Tfr-deficient mice with neuritin injections, they had amazing results.

“Tfr-deficient mice treated with neuritin appeared healthy,” Gonzalez-Figueroa and her colleagues wrote in their paper, explaining that the treatment led to the disappearance of the B cell population.

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The team warns that they have yet to understand the full pathway involved in these immune mechanisms, or the effects of neuritin on other cellular processes. Despite the fact that neuritin has been studied in the human nervous system for a long time, the exact way in which it triggers cells has not been clear.

To find out, leukocytes from human blood and tonsils were analyzed for the presence of the protein, which made it possible to determine its internal action. The results may lead to a better understanding of how we can use neuritin in the future to treat disease.

“This may be more than a new drug. This could be a completely new approach to treating allergies and autoimmune diseases, said a co-author of the study. “If this approach is successful, we won't need to deplete important immune cells or weaken the entire immune system; instead, we should only use the proteins that our own body uses.”

If they're right and Neuritin is safe, it could one day allow a growing number of people with allergies and autoimmune diseases to get rid of them for good.

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