Mitophagy Balance in Various Cell Subsets in Patients with ANCA-Associated Vasculitis and Correlation with the Presence of Anti-Neutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibodies

Aggelos Banos; Konstantinos Thomas; Panagiotis Garantziotis; Nikos Malissovas; Anastasia Filia; Antigoni Pieta; Dionysios Nikolopoulos; Savina Moustafa; Alexandros Panagiotopoulos; Dimitrios T Boumpas; Dimitrios Vassilopoulos

doi:10.31138/mjr.31.3.366

Mitophagy Balance in Various Cell Subsets in Patients with ANCA-Associated Vasculitis and Correlation with the Presence of Anti-Neutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibodies

Mediterr J Rheumatol. 2020 Jul 4;31(3):366-368. doi: 10.31138/mjr.31.3.366. eCollection 2020 Sep.

Affiliations

¹ Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, Greece.
² Joint Rheumatology Program, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine, Clinical Immunology-Rheumatology Unit, 2 Department of Medicine and Laboratory, Athens, Greece.
³ Joint Rheumatology Program, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine-Clinical Immunology-Rheumatology Unit, 4th Department of Medicine, Athens, Greece.

Abstract

ANCA-associated vasculitides (AAVs) are characterised by heterogeneous molecular and pathophysiological traits, causing ambiguous differential diagnosis and taxonomy. Response to therapy has proven far from successful, contributing to high mortality. Transcriptome analysis of different vasculitis subtypes adds new leads in elucidating mechanisms of disease and the role of specific cell subsets to them. Recent findings have shown that mitophagy is a procedure whose imbalance could lead to immune dysregulation with certain involvement to autoimmunity. Inflammatory response related mitophagy is yet to be described in AAVs. We here describe a research protocol to investigate mitophagy in monocytes, neutrophils, and T cells in AAV patients, and the relationship of disturbed mitophagy with ANCA seropositivity.

Keywords: autoimmunity; mitophagy; transcriptomics; vasculitis.