COMMENTARY

Coeliac disease

Gliadin peptide specific intestinal T cells in coeliac disease

K E A Lundin¹, L M Sollid²

¹ Department of Medicine and Institute of Immunology, Rikshospitalet University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
² Institute of Immunology, Rikshospitalet University Hospital, Oslo, Norway

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr K E A Lundin, Department of Medicine, Rikshospitalet University Hospital, N-0027 Oslo, Norway;
knut.lundin@rikshospitalet.no

---

Can modification of wheat gliadin peptides be used for immunotherapy in coeliac disease?

---

Keywords: coeliac disease; gluten; gliadin peptides; HLA restriction; mucosal immunity; T cells; immunomodulation

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Despite its heterogeneous clinical appearance, coeliac disease has a remarkable uniform human leucocyte antigen (HLA) association. The majority of coeliac disease patients carry a certain variant of HLA-DQ2, the rest carry HLA-DQ8.^1,2 As the physiological role of the HLA system is to present peptide fragments of antigens to T cells, it would seem logical that the HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8 molecules predispose to coeliac disease by presenting peptides to T cells in the intestinal mucosa. The peptides these T cells recognise could derive form gluten peptides as coeliac disease is precipitated by intestinal exposure to wheat gluten and related proteins of other cereals. In fact, this simple concept has gained substantial experimental evidence in recent years.^1,2 A paper in this issue of Gut³ adds further credence to this model [see page 212].

The small intestinal lesion is characterised by inflammation and infiltration of T cells both in . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Investigation of the putative immunodominant T cell epitopes in coeliac disease

H J Ellis, E L Pollock, W Engel, J S Fraser, S Rosen-Bronson, H Wieser, and P J Ciclitira
Gut 2003 52: 212-217. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]