Virus, liver and autoimmunity

The immune system's ability to distinguish self from nonself is essential f or both host defence against microbial antigens and protection of self-anti gens from autoimmune destruction. Such discrimination is complicated by ext ensive structural homology shared between micro-organisms and self-antigens , a condition known as molecular mimicry: Molecular mimicry provides the fo undation for an immune response directed against an exogenous agent such as a virus to cross-react with mimicked host self sequences, leading to autoi mmunity, and in some cases, tissue injury and autoimmune disease. in this r eview we analyse studies investigating the role of molecular mimicry and cr oss-reactive immunity in liver-related autoimmunity.