Inflammatory arthritis and systemic bone loss are attenuated by gastrointestinal helminth parasites

Abstract

Infections with different helminth species have been observed to ameliorate a variety of chronic inflammatory diseases. Herein, we show that the natural murine helminth species, Heligmosomoides polygyrus bakeri (Hp) is capable of attenuating disease severity in two different inflammatory arthritis models. Furthermore, we show that excretory–secretory (ES) products from Hp directly suppress osteoclast differentiation in vitro. Taken together, these results demonstrate that helminth infections can dampen autoimmune diseases and highlight a previously unrecognized and important role for ES products, by directly impacting on bone destruction.

Keywords:

• Arthritis
• helminths
• excretory–secretory products
• bone metabolism
• osteoclast

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (CRC1181 to G.S.), and the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement n. 310948.

Supplementary material available online.