Thymoma-associated myasthenia gravis: On the search for a pathogen signature

Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease mainly mediated by anti-acetylcholine receptor (AChR) antibodies. In the late onset, a thymoma, tumor of the thymus, is quite frequent. However, the events leading to thymoma and MG are not understood. As thymoma-associated MG (MG-T) patients also display anti-interferon type I (IFN-I) neutralizing antibodies, we investigated if MG-T could be associated with an anti-viral signature. RT-PCR analyses demonstrated huge increases of IFN-I subtypes, IFN-α2, -α8, -ω and -β, in thymoma-associated MG but not in thymomas without MG or in control thymuses. Next, we investigated if dsRNA signaling pathway involvement could be observed in MG-T, as recently observed in early-onset MG. We observed an abnormal regulation of dsRNA-sensing molecules with an increase of toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3), and a decrease of protein kinase R (PKR) and dsRNA helicases (RIG-I and MDA5) in thymoma from MG patients. We also detected a decreased expression of p53, the tumor suppressor that is known to be down-regulated by dsRNA. Altogether, these results strongly suggest that MG-T could be linked to a viral infection. As p16 (CDKN2A), a marker of HPV infections, was up-regulated in MG-T, we thus screened DNA from thymomas for human papillomavirus (HPV) by real-time PCR using HPV consensus SPF10 primers. RT-PCR results were negative for all samples tested. We confirmed the absence of HPV DNA detection by end point PCR using FAP primers to amplify a larger panel of HPV genotypes. Our data clearly demonstrate INF-I overexpression together with the activation of innate immunity pathways in thymoma-associated MG suggesting that MG might develop after a pathogen infection. We were not able to relate thymoma to HPV infections and the implication of other pathogens is discussed.