Coeliac disease: A unique model for investigating broken tolerance in autoimmunity

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2016. Coeliac disease, a prevalent immune-mediated enteropathy driven by dietary gluten, provides an exceptional human model to dissect the genetic, environmental and immunologic factors operating in autoimmunity. Despite the causative antigen being an exogenous food protein, coeliac disease has many features in common with autoimmune disease including a strong HLA class II association and the presence of pathogenic CD4 + T cells and autoantibodies. CD8 + intraepithelial lymphocytes specifically target and destroy intestinal epithelium in response to stress signals and not a specific antigen. A unique feature of coeliac disease is the ability to remove gluten to induce diseas..