House dust mite sensitization drives cross-reactive immune responses to homologous helminth proteins.

Pedro Henrique Gazzinelli-Guimaraes, Sasisekhar Bennuru, Rafael de Queiroz Prado, Alessandra Ricciardi, Joshua Sciurba, Jonah Kupritz, Matthew Moser, Olena Kamenyeva, Thomas B Nutman

PLoS pathogens 2021 Mar

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The establishment of type 2 responses driven by allergic sensitization prior to exposure to helminth parasites has demonstrated how tissue-specific responses can protect against migrating larval stages, but, as a consequence, allow for immune-mediated, parasite/allergy-associated morbidity. In this way, whether helminth cross-reacting allergen-specific antibodies are produced and play a role during the helminth infection, or exacerbate the allergic outcome awaits elucidation. Thus, the main objective of the study was to investigate whether house dust mite (HDM) sensitization triggers allergen-specific antibodies that interact with Ascaris antigens and mediate antibody-dependent deleterious effects on these parasites as well as, to assess the capacity of cross-reactive helminth proteins to trigger allergic inflammation in house dust mite presensitized mice. Here, we show that the sensitization with HDM-extract drives marked IgE and IgG1 antibody responses that cross-react with Ascaris larval antigens. Proteomic analysis of Ascaris larval antigens recognized by these HDM-specific antibodies identified Ascaris tropomyosin and enolase as the 2 major HDM homologues based on high sequence and structural similarity. Moreover, the helminth tropomyosin could drive Type-2 associated pulmonary inflammation similar to HDM following HDM tropomyosin sensitization. The HDM-triggered IgE cross-reactive antibodies were found to be functional as they mediated immediate hypersensitivity responses in skin testing. Finally, we demonstrated that HDM sensitization in either B cells or FcγRIII alpha-chain deficient mice indicated that the allergen driven cell-mediated larval killing is not antibody-dependent. Taken together, our data suggest that aeroallergen sensitization drives helminth reactive antibodies through molecular and structural similarity between HDM and Ascaris antigens suggesting that cross-reactive immune responses help drive allergic inflammation.

Citation

Pedro Henrique Gazzinelli-Guimaraes, Sasisekhar Bennuru, Rafael de Queiroz Prado, Alessandra Ricciardi, Joshua Sciurba, Jonah Kupritz, Matthew Moser, Olena Kamenyeva, Thomas B Nutman. House dust mite sensitization drives cross-reactive immune responses to homologous helminth proteins. PLoS pathogens. 2021 Mar;17(3):e1009337