International Immunology Advance Access originally published online on February 15, 2006
International Immunology 2006 18(4):573-580; doi:10.1093/intimm/dxh399
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Anti-HSP auto-antibodies enhance HSP-induced pro-inflammatory cytokine production in human monocytic cells via Toll-like receptors
1 Department of Microbiology, Sapporo Medical University School of Medicine, South-1, West-17, Chuo-ku, Sapporo 060-8556, Japan
2 Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, Jichi Medical School, Shimotsuke, Tochigi 329-0498, Japan
Correspondence to: N. Fujii; E-mail: fujii{at}sapmed.ac.jp
Auto-antibodies against heat shock proteins (HSPs) are frequently found in the sera of patients with rheumatic and other autoimmune diseases. However, it is unclear whether these auto-antibodies play a role in the pathophysiology and etiology of these diseases. We found that a murine anti-HSP60 mAb enhanced the production of IL-8 and tumor necrosis factor-
induced by human HSP60 in the human monocytic cell lines THP-1 and U937, and human peripheral blood monocytes. Similar enhancement was observed with the combination of human HSP70 protein and a murine anti-HSP70 mAb. The enhancing effects were also observed for F(ab')2 fragment, but not for monovalent Fab fragment. This suggests that the enhancement is due to cross-linking of HSP by the anti-HSP antibodies. The induction of IL-8 was dramatically suppressed by the transfection of a dominant-negative mutant of Toll-like receptor 4. We also found that sera from patients with rheumatic autoimmune diseases, which contained higher anti-HSP60 auto-antibody titers than sera from healthy donors, significantly enhanced the IL-8 production induced by human HSP60 in THP-1 cells. We propose that auto-antibodies against HSPs have the potential to play a pathogenic role in rheumatic autoimmune diseases by enhancing inflammatory reactions.
Keywords: heat shock protein, auto-antibody, Toll-like receptor, proinflammatory cytokine, rheumatic autoimmune disease