On October 29, 2019 (GMT), a research work of Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital titled “Shotgun metagenomics reveals an enrichment of potentially cross-reactive bacterial epitopes in ankylosing spondylitis patients, as well as the effects of TNFi therapy upon microbiome composition”, was published online in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (2018 Impact Factor 14.299), which is the high-ranked peer-reviewed journal in the field of rheumatology. Prof. Huji Xu from Department of Rheumatology and Immunology is the contributing corresponding author.
In recent years, a series of studies have shown that the interaction between disordered gut microbiota and host immune system is involved in the pathogenesis of Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), but the mechanism is not yet fully understood. The major results of Prof. Xu’s study include: 1) Demonstrating that the gut flora of AS patients produces a large number of specific epitope peptides which can be presented by HLA-B27. The finding for the first elucidates the immunologic mechanism that the epitope peptides of gut flora being involved in the pathogenesis of HLA-B27-related diseases. 2) Validating that the altered gut microbiota and their metabolic pathways associated with AS development promote bowel inflammatory responses, which confirms the direct pathogenic role of disordered gut microbiota; 3) Treating AS patients using TNF inhibitors largely ameliorates gut microbiota disorder, implying a novel mechanistic action of TNF inhibitors.
The results of this study suggest that modulation of gut microbes may develop into a new approach for treatment and prevention of AS. However, further studies are still needed to identify the characteristics of potential pathogenic microbes precisely.
Prof. Huji Xu is the co-corresponding author, and Dr. Jian Yin in the research group is the co-first author. This work is supported by funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology.(Reviewer Jiang Liu)
