Heavy metal

Personally, heavy metal isn't my type of music - I'm more a country girl myself ;-)

But researchers at Harvard discovered certain heavy metals such as gold and platinum strip the MHC Class II molecules. MHC refers to Major Histocompatibility Complex. Every person has MHC, and MHC matching as close as possible is important in tissue and organ donation. MHC helps determine what's really your cells and what's not your cells. In autoimmmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, lupus, or even celiac, the MHC gets confused and begins to think that what is your body is really not and will begin to destroy it.

MHC has Class I receptors, and Class II receptors. My headache is fuddling my memory of Class I, but I know that certain Class II receptors mediate type 1 diabetes in the mouse model. I worked on a project where we introduced MHC Class II molecule called IEd, and once expressed prevented islet destruction.

It's an interesting finding, but I know that MHC Class I receptors are involved in autoimmune diseases too. For example, in type 1 diabetes as well as celiac, MHC Class I DQb8 is different in people that don't have those diseases.

It's also too bad that heavy metals can't be taken without other health consquences. Plus, MHC Class II does have roles in mediating infections. So this can't be a long term solution.

But it's a cool discovery none the less. Here's a summary of the findings.