A Secreted Bacterial Peptidylarginine Deiminase Can Neutralize Human Innate Immune Defenses

Authors: Tim Stobernack, Marines du Teil Espina, Lianne M. Mulder, Laura M. Palma Medina, Dillon Piebenga, Giorgio Gabarrini, Xin Zhao, Koen M. J. Janssen, Jarnick Hulzebos, Elisabeth Brouwer, Thomas Sura, Dörte Becher, A.J. van Winkelhoff, Friedrich Götz, Andreas Otto, Johanna Westra, Jan Maarten van Dijl - mBio 2018 cited by 86

Bacterial pathogens do not only succeed in breaking the barriers that protect humans from infection, but they also manage to evade insults from the human immune system. The importance of the present study resides in the fact that protein citrullination is shown to represent a new bacterial mechanism for immune evasion. In particular, the oral pathogen P. gingivalis employs this mechanism to defuse innate immune responses by secreting a protein-citrullinating enzyme. Of note, this finding impacts not only the global health problem of periodontitis, but it also extends to the prevalent autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis, which has been strongly associated with periodontitis, PPAD activity, and loss of tolerance against citrullinated proteins, such as the histone H3.