Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UNIPROT:P00790 (PGA)
 2,475 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Pepsin exists in macrophages. Phagocytosis of foreign materials increases pepsin activity in macrophages and also causes extracellular release of pepsin from macrophages. Pepsin enhances antibody production by spleen cells against heterologous materials and suppresses that against homologous materials. Pepsin selectively decomposes immune complexes at neutral pH, and intravenous pepsin ameliorates symptoms in autoimmune disease models, such as immune complex glomerulonephritis in MRL/l mice and SLE-like syndromes of NZB/W F1 mice. These results prompted us to propose a "pepsin-immunoregulation hypothesis", according to which pepsin acts as a regulating factor in the immune system.
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PMID:Pepsin-immunoregulation hypothesis. 642 15

Autoimmune gastritis is characterised by lymphocytic infiltration of the gastric submucosa, with loss of parietal and chief cells and achlorhydria. Often, gastritis is expressed clinically as cobalamin deficiency with megaloblastic anaemia, which is generally described as a disease of the elderly. Here, we report on two prepubertal children who developed autoimmune gastritis. One child developed autoimmune gastritis as part of a polyglandular autoimmune disease from a family with polyglandular autoimmune disease type II (PGA type II) and the other as part of a classic "thyro-gastric cluster," which may have been triggered by emotional trauma. Both children presented with normal small bowel biopsies, with abnormal gut permeability, which subsequently resolved. These patients are among the youngest reported to date. The immune systems targetted the gastric parietal cell autoantigens (ATP4A and ATP4B) in both children, similar to the elderly. The study of children with autoimmune gastritis and their families may provide additional insights into the disease's pathogenesis and may also lead to the identification of inheritable factors influencing susceptibility. This report underlines the necessity to screen paediatric patients with organ-specific autoimmune diseases for co-existent conditions. Children with polyglandular autoimmune disease are at particularly high risk.
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PMID:Autoimmune gastritis and parietal cell reactivity in two children with abnormal intestinal permeability. 1821 36