Investing the role of environmental factors including diet and pollutants in the role of autoimmune disease.

Autoimmune disease places a great burden on society, with one in ten people in the U.K. affected. Many autoimmune diseases have a genetic component, but other environmental factors have also been implicated, including obesity, smoking, pollutants, diet, and changes to gut health.

The Mauri lab have previously shown that the gut plays a role in rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease characterized by inflammation of the joints. They have demonstrated that the short-chain fatty acid butyrate ameliorates murine arthritis via the downstream serotonin metabolite 5-HIAA.

Other published work by the Mauri lab has also shown that rheumatoid arthritis patients have increased gut permeability as characterised by increased levels of lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a component of Gram-negative bacteria; LPS-binding protein (LBP); and intestinal fatty acid-binding protein (I-FABP), a unique marker of gut damage also used in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Furthermore, murine models of arthritis treated with AT-1001, a zonulin antagonist which improves gut barrier integrity, showed a profound decrease in inflammation.

During the work in my rotation, I showed that patients with other autoimmune diseases, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and multiple sclerosis (MS) patients also show increased levels of gut permeability as well as significantly decreased levels of serotonin, suggesting a shared role of the gut and serotonin across the spectrum of autoimmune disease.


My PhD project will further investigate how environmental factors, such as the diet, affect the gut and contribute to the development of autoimmune disease. Understanding the role of the gut in autoimmune disease may allow for the development of new therapeutic interventions targeting the gut. Furthermore, it may allow patients understanding of how environmental factors affect disease and provide them with the knowledge and agency to improve their health and reduce reliance on the canonical immunosuppressive drugs which have adverse side effects.