engleski

"Epitope spreading" phenomenon in autoimmune bullous diseases

"Epitope spreading" phenomenon can be defined as a development of immune, specific autoreactive lymphocyte T or B response to endogenous epitopes secondary to the release of self antigens during a chronic autoimmune or inflammatory disease. That means, in essence, that a primary autoimmune or inflammatory process may cause tissue damage in such a manner that certain protein components that are immunologically "hidden" from the immune system become "revealed" and evoke a secondary autoimmune response. It can occur within the same protein (intramolecular) and/or to other proteins within the same tissue or protein complex (intermolecular). We describe some interesting clinical cases of autoimmune bullous diseases in whome this interesting phenomenon might occured.

Epitope spreading; autoimmune bullous diseases

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