“Stealthy Leprosy Pathogen Evades Critical Vitamin D-Dependent Immune Response”

Science Daily News reported today about an article in the online edition of the Journal Nature, on a breakthrough on a mechanisms that the leprosy pathogen, Mycobacterium leprae, uses to avoid destruction by the immune system. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “Leprosy, is a chronic infectious disease that primarily affects the peripheral nerves, upper respiratory tract, eyes, and nasal mucosa.” Research in cures for leprosy are still far away, until all of the mechanisms leprosy uses can be understood. This research by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has made a significant breakthrough by discovering that m. leprae actually inhibited the gene related to vitamin D and the immune system. Vitamin D is a hormone that among other things used by the immune system in it's immune response to pathogen attacks. The discovery that m. leprae is changing the micro-RNAs in order to lower the vitamin D in the host is fascinating. This article is of a particular interest to me, because it relates new discoveries to a disease that has been known about for thousands of years has wide ranging implications to cures of most disease that involve vitamin D deficiencies.

(Credit: UCLA)

The photos shown here represent the spread of the disease that modifies the mRNA and one that doesn't.

According to Dr. Modlin one of the lead investigators for this study, “vitamin D insufficiency has been associated with a number of infectious and autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular disease and cancers,” which implies that the mRNA modification of vitamin D could be a standard mechanism that various pathologies use to weaken the immune system. He also in this article discussed how researchers could in the future use a combination of vitamin D and specific genetic targeting to boost the immune systems response to fend off the offending pathogen.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120129151106.htm