Adjuvant arthritis (AA) is an autoimmune disease inducible in rats involving T cell reactivity to the mycobacterial 65-kDa heat shock protein (HSP65). HSP65-specific T cells cross-reactive with the mammalian 60-kDa heat shock protein (HSP60) are thought to participate in the modulation of AA. In this work we studied the effects on AA of DNA vaccination using constructs coding for HSP65 (pHSP65)...

Objectives-To investigate the role of humoral immunity to mycobacterial hsp65 in the aetiology of rheumatoid arthritis. Methods-Levels of IgG antibodies to recombinant mycobacterial hsp65 were measured by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in serum samples of 152 twin pairs discordant for RA and in serum samples from 62 normal blood donors. Results-No significant differences between anti...

Nocardia identification required laborious and time-consuming phenotypic and chemotaxonomic methods until molecular methods were developed in the mid-1990s. Here we reassessed the capacity of PCR-restriction enzyme pattern analysis (PRA) of the hsp65 gene to differentiate Nocardia species, including 36 new species. Our results confirm that hsp65 PRA must no longer be used for Nocardia species i...

So far, genetic diversity among strains within Mycobacterium massiliense has rarely been studied. To investigate the genetic diversity among M. massiliense, we conducted phylogenetic analysis based on hsp65 (603-bp) and rpoB (711-bp) sequences from 65 M. massiliense Korean isolates. We found that hsp65 sequence analysis could clearly differentiate them into two distinct genotypes, Type I and Ty...

Current study evaluated the hsp65 Nested PCR Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis (hsp65 Nested PCR-PRA) to detect and identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex directly in clinical samples for a rapid and specific diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB). hsp65 Nested PCR-PRA was applied directly to 218 clinical samples obtained from 127 patients suspected of TB or another mycobacterial i...

In the last several years, the use of dendritic cells has been studied as a therapeutic strategy against tumors. Dendritic cells can be pulsed with peptides or full-length protein, or they can be transfected with DNA or RNA. However, comparative studies suggest that transfecting dendritic cells with messenger RNA (mRNA) is superior to other antigen-loading techniques in generating immunocompete...

BACKGROUND Our group previously demonstrated that a DNA plasmid encoding the mycobacterial 65-kDa heat shock protein (DNA-HSP65) displayed prophylactic and therapeutic effect in a mice model for tuberculosis. This protection was attributed to induction of a strong cellular immunity against HSP65. As specific immunity to HSP60 family has been detected in arthritis, multiple sclerosis and diabete...

An outbreak of postsurgical infections caused by rapidly growing mycobacteria has been ongoing in Brazil since 2004. The degrees of similarity of the rpoB and hsp65 sequences from the clinical isolates and the corresponding sequences from both the Mycobacterium massiliense and the M. bolletii type strains were above the accepted limit for interspecies variability, leading to conflicting identif...

Vaccines are considered by many to be one of the most successful medical interventions against infectious diseases. But many significant obstacles remain, such as optimizing DNA vaccines for use in humans or large animals. The amount of doses, route and easiness of administration are also important points to consider in the design of new DNA vaccines. Heterologous prime-boost regimens probably ...

BACKGROUND Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a frequently encountered arrhythmia after cardiac surgery, but its underlying mechanisms are still unclear. We hypothesize that autoimmune and inflammatory responses against heat shock protein 65 (HSP65) may be involved and hence examined the relationship between HSP65 autoantibodies and occurrence of postoperative AF. METHODS AND RESULTS A prospective s...