Immunoproteasome LMP2 60HH Variant Alters MBP Epitope Generation and Reduces the Risk to Develop Multiple Sclerosis in Italian Female Population
BackgroundAlbeit several studies pointed out the pivotal role that CD4+T cells have in Multiple Sclerosis, the CD8+ T cells involvement in the pathology is still in its early phases of investigation. Proteasome degradation is the key step in the production of MHC class I-restricted epitopes and therefore its activity could be an important element in the activation and regulation of autoreactive CD8+ T cells in Multiple Sclerosis.Methodology/principal findingsImmunoproteasomes and PA28-alphabeta regulator are present in MS affected brain area and accumulated in plaques. They are expressed in cell types supposed to be involved in MS development such as neurons, endothelial cells, oligodendroc…
Genes, Ageing and Longevity in Humans: Problems, Advantages and Perspectives.
Many epidemiological data indicate the presence of a strong familial component of longevity that is largely determined by genetics, and a number of possible associations between longevity and allelic variants of genes have been described. A breakthrough strategy to get insight into the genetics of longevity is the study of centenarians, the best example of successful ageing. We review the main results regarding nuclear genes as well as the mitochondrial genome, focusing on the investigations performed on Italian centenarians, compared to those from other countries. These studies produced interesting results on many putative "longevity genes". Nevertheless, many discrepancies are reported, l…
An APOE haplotype associated with decreased ε4 expression increases the risk of late onset Alzheimer's disease.
This paper addresses a tenet of the literature on APOE, i.e., the relationship between the effects of the e4, one of the established genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), and its expression levels as determined by APOE promoter polymorphisms. Five polymorphisms (-491 rs449647, -427 rs769446, -219 rs405509, and e rs429358-rs7412) were studied in 1308 AD patients and 1082 control individuals from the Central-Northern Italy. Major findings of the present study are the following: 1) the variants -219T and e4 increase the risk for late onset AD (LOAD) when they are both present in cis on the same chromosome (in phase); 2) the correlation between the haplotype (-219T/e4) and AD risk p…