I realize this post is too late for further class credit, but its too interesting to not post. Therefore I'll keep it short.
I found this story in the press from Minnesota. See the link:
http://news.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=2&a=317960
It appears workers in a meat processing plant may have introduced pig brain as antigen while using pressurized air to clean the word environment. There are MS like symptoms (disease unknown at this time), and all affected employees worked near a machine desposing of brain. This sounds like the example JJ gave in class about the lab tech exploding a glass blender, thereby "inoculating" himself with novel antigen.
Very interesting..Do you guys think the symptoms are immunological? What are the hypothetical mechanism? Or alternatives?
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This article mentions that the disease is treatable. I would love to know how the affected individuals were treated and if there are any residual symptoms.
I also immediately thought about the glass blender example from class when I heard about this article. I wonder if this is a case of novel antigen introduction through inhalation, or if there is something more to it. Further down in the article one of the doctors speculates that perhaps that the hogs were carrying some human pathogens in their gut flora, implying that maybe these cases are due to some sort of infection instead of novel antigens. However, since it's only the people who work near that one particular machine that are affected, the pathogen hypothesis doesn't seem to be the most likely, especially since the disease progression is so long.
From the AP:
Five of the workers…have been diagnosed with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, or CIDP, a rare immune disorder that attacks the nerves and produces tingling, numbness and weakness in the arms and legs, sometimes causing lasting damage.
New cases of CIDP occur at the rate of one or two per 100,000 people each year, according to Dr. P. James B. Dyck of the Mayo Clinic…
The working theory from two Mayo Clinic neurologists treating the workers: Exposure to pig brain tissue scattered by the compressed air triggered the illnesses.
"As we've investigated these patients, we have information that suggests very strongly that the immune system is activated very strongly in a very compelling way," said Dr. Daniel Lachance.
(The workers wore protective goggles but nothing over their noses or mouths as they blew the brains out of pig heads. This sure sounds like a human example of what in mice is called experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.)
It will be very intersting to identify the antigen responsible. In EAE the mice develop an immune response to myelin basic protein-if somehting similar is happening in the workers, then the antigen may be similar and/or a highly conserved protein that "insulates" neurons allowing rapid signaling to occur along neuronal tracts and if interrupted can cause the symptoms described in the article.
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