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Gut microbiome and the risk factors in central nervous system autoimmunity
Author(s) -
Ochoa-Repáraz Javier,
Kasper Lloyd H.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/j.febslet.2014.09.024
Subject(s) - microbiome , biology , immune system , immunology , disease , autoimmunity , gut flora , gut–brain axis , gut microbiome , metagenomics , niche , bioinformatics , genetics , medicine , ecology , gene , pathology
Humans are colonized after birth by microbial organisms that form a heterogeneous community, collectively termed microbiota. The genomic pool of this macro‐community is named microbiome. The gut microbiota is essential for the complete development of the immune system, representing a binary network in which the microbiota interact with the host providing important immune and physiologic function and conversely the bacteria protect themselves from host immune defense. Alterations in the balance of the gut microbiome due to a combination of environmental and genetic factors can now be associated with detrimental or protective effects in experimental autoimmune diseases. These gut microbiome alterations can unbalance the gastrointestinal immune responses and influence distal effector sites leading to CNS disease including both demyelination and affective disorders. The current range of risk factors for MS includes genetic makeup and environmental elements. Of interest to this review is the consistency between this range of MS risk factors and the gut microbiome. We postulate that the gut microbiome serves as the niche where different MS risk factors merge, thereby influencing the disease process.