Circulating gluten-specific FOXP3⁺CD39⁺ regulatory T cells have impaired suppressive function in patients with celiac disease

Background Celiac disease is a chronic immune-mediated inflammatory disorder of the gut triggered by dietary gluten. Although the effector T-cell response in patients with celiac disease has been well characterized, the role of regulatory T (Treg) cells in the loss of tolerance to gluten remains poorly understood. Objective We sought to define whether patients with celiac disease have a dysfunction or lack of gluten-specific forkhead box protein 3 (FOXP3)+ Treg cells. Methods Treated patients with celiac disease underwent oral wheat challenge to stimulate recirculation of gluten-specific T cells. Peripheral blood was collected before and after challenge. To comprehensively measure the gluten-specific CD4+ T-cell response, we paired traditional IFN-γ ELISpot with an assay to detect antigen-specific CD4+ T cells that does not rely on tetramers, antigen-stimulated cytokine production, or proliferation but rather on antigen-induced coexpression of CD25 and OX40 (CD134). Results Numbers of circulating gluten-specific Treg cells and effector T cells both increased significantly after oral wheat challenge, peaking at day 6. Surprisingly, we found that approximately 80% of the ex vivo circulating gluten-specific CD4+ T cells were FOXP3+CD39+ Treg cells, which reside within the pool of memory CD4+CD25+CD127lowCD45RO+ Treg cells. Although we observed normal suppressive function in peripheral polyclonal Treg cells from patients with celiac disease, after a short in vitro expansion, the gluten-specific FOXP3+CD39+ Treg cells exhibited significantly reduced suppressive function compared with polyclonal Treg cells. Conclusion This study provides the first estimation of FOXP3+CD39+ Treg cell frequency within circulating gluten-specific CD4+ T cells after oral gluten challenge of patients with celiac disease. FOXP3+CD39+ Treg cells comprised a major proportion of all circulating gluten-specific CD4+ T cells but had impaired suppressive function, indicating that Treg cell dysfunction might be a key contributor to disease pathogenesis

Effect of Hookworm Infection on Wheat Challenge in Celiac Disease – A Randomised Double-Blinded Placebo Controlled Trial

Background and Aims: The association between hygiene and prevalence of autoimmune disease has been attributed in part to enteric helminth infection. A pilot study of experimental infection with the hookworm Necator americanus was undertaken among a group of otherwise healthy people with celiac disease to test the potential of the helminth to suppress the immunopathology induced by gluten

Nomenclature and listing of celiac disease relevant gluten T-cell epitopes restricted by HLA-DQ molecules

Celiac disease is caused by an abnormal intestinal T-cell response to gluten proteins of wheat, barley and rye. Over the last few years, a number of gluten T-cell epitopes restricted by celiac disease associated HLA-DQ molecules have been characterized. In this work, we give an overview of these epitopes and suggest a comprehensive, new nomenclature

A Universal Approach to Eliminate Antigenic Properties of Alpha-Gliadin Peptides in Celiac Disease

Celiac disease is caused by an uncontrolled immune response to gluten, a heterogeneous mixture of wheat storage proteins, including the α-gliadins. It has been shown that α-gliadins harbor several major epitopes involved in the disease pathogenesis. A major step towards elimination of gluten toxicity for celiac disease patients would thus be the elimination of such epitopes from α-gliadins. We have analyzed over 3,000 expressed α-gliadin sequences from 11 bread wheat cultivars to determine whether they encode for peptides potentially involved in celiac disease. All identified epitope variants were synthesized as peptides and tested for binding to the disease-associated HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8 molecules and for recognition by patient-derived α-gliadin specific T cell clones. Several specific naturally occurring amino acid substitutions were identified for each of the α-gliadin derived peptides involved in celiac disease that eliminate the antigenic properties of the epitope variants. Finally, we provide proof of principle at the peptide level that through the systematic introduction of such naturally occurring variations α-gliadins genes can be generated that no longer encode antigenic peptides. This forms a crucial step in the development of strategies to modify gluten genes in wheat so that it becomes safe for celiac disease patients. It also provides the information to design and introduce safe gluten genes in other cereals, which would exhibit improved quality while remaining safe for consumption by celiac disease patients

Coeliac disease: a unique model for investigating broken tolerance in autoimmunity

Coeliac disease, a prevalent immune-mediated enteropathy driven by dietary gluten, provides an exceptional human model to dissect the genetic, environmental and immunologic factors operating in autoimmunity. Despite the causative antigen being an exogenous food protein, coeliac disease has many features in common with autoimmune disease including a strong HLA class II association and the presence of pathogenic CD4+ T cells and autoantibodies. CD8+ intraepithelial lymphocytes specifically target and destroy intestinal epithelium in response to stress signals and not a specific antigen. A unique feature of coeliac disease is the ability to remove gluten to induce disease remission and reintroduce it to trigger a memory response. This provides an unparalleled opportunity to study disease-relevant CD4+ T cells that have been expanded in vivo. As a result, the causative peptides have been characterised at a level unprecedented for any autoimmune disease. Despite the complexity of the gluten proteome, resistance to gastrointestinal proteolysis and susceptibility to post-translational modification by transglutaminase help shape a restricted repertoire of immunogenic gluten peptides that have high affinity for disease-associated HLA. The critical steps in coeliac disease pathogenesis have been broadly elucidated and provide the basis for experimental therapies in pre-clinical or clinical development. However, little is known about how and why tolerance to gluten sometimes breaks or fails to develop. Understanding the interactions between genes, the environment, gluten immunity and the microbiome may provide novel approaches for the prevention and treatment of disease

Genomic prediction of celiac disease targeting HLA-positive individuals

BACKGROUND: Genomic prediction aims to leverage genome-wide genetic data towards better disease diagnostics and risk scores. We have previously published a genomic risk score (GRS) for celiac disease (CD), a common and highly heritable autoimmune disease, which differentiates between CD cases and population-based controls at a clinically-relevant predictive level, improving upon other gene-based approaches. HLA risk haplotypes, particularly HLA-DQ2.5, are necessary but not sufficient for CD, with at least one HLA risk haplotype present in up to half of most Caucasian populations. Here, we assess a genomic prediction strategy that specifically targets this common genetic susceptibility subtype, utilizing a supervised learning procedure for CD that leverages known HLA-DQ2.5 risk. METHODS: Using L1/L2-regularized support-vector machines trained on large European case-control datasets, we constructed novel CD GRSs specific to individuals with HLA-DQ2.5 risk haplotypes (GRS-DQ2.5) and compared them with the predictive power of the existing CD GRS (GRS14) as well as two haplotype-based approaches, externally validating the results in a North American case-control study. RESULTS: Consistent with previous observations, both the existing GRS14 and the GRS-DQ2.5 had better predictive performance than the HLA haplotype approaches. GRS-DQ2.5 models, based on directly genotyped or imputed markers, achieved similar levels of predictive performance (AUC = 0.718-0.73), which were substantially higher than those obtained from the DQ2.5 zygosity alone (AUC = 0.558), the HLA risk haplotype method (AUC = 0.634), or the generic GRS14 (AUC = 0.679). In a screening model of at-risk individuals, the GRS-DQ2.5 lowered the number of unnecessary follow-up tests for CD across most sensitivity levels. Relative to a baseline implicating all DQ2.5-positive individuals for follow-up, the GRS-DQ2.5 resulted in a net saving of 2.2 unnecessary follow-up tests for each justified test while still capturing 90 % of DQ2.5-positive CD cases. CONCLUSIONS: Genomic risk scores for CD that target genetically at-risk sub-groups improve predictive performance beyond traditional approaches and may represent a useful strategy for prioritizing individuals at increased risk of disease, thus potentially reducing unnecessary follow-up diagnostic tests