A previously healthy young man develops vomiting and diarrhea and writes it off as having eaten some bad food.  One- to three-weeks later, he begins to develop weakness and tingling in his feet and legs.  Gradually, paralysis spreads to his upper body and arms.  He may even need a respirator for breathing. 

The condition, Guillain Barré Syndrome (GBS), is the world’s leading cause of acute neuromuscular paralysis in humans, and its prevalence is increasing.  But, despite much speculation and correlation with several infectious diseases, its causes have remained unknown.

After eight years of investigation and verification, a Michigan State University research team at the College of Veterinary Medicine has established the first causal link between development of GBS and infection with a pathogen commonly found on improperly cooked chicken, Campylobacter jejuni. 

The food-borne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni is a principal cause of vomiting and diarrhea that infects 1.3 million people yearly in the United States. Besides GBS, C. jejuni also is known to trigger other autoimmune disorders such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Reiter’s arthritis.

Dr. Linda Mansfield and her team, funded by the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, through the Enterics Research Investigational Network, were the first to use a comparative approach in mice to identify and explore the link between infection with C. jejuni and the development of GBS. 

“We have successfully produced three mouse models of GBS that represent different forms of the syndrome seen in patients,” says Dr. Mansfield. “The models provide a unique opportunity to understand the mechanisms of how this form of autoimmunity develops. They, and the data generated, will be an immediate resource to the scientific community around the world. Understanding mechanisms leading to this autoimmune condition is now more important because Zika virus has also been linked to the development of GBS.”

Despite the severity of GBS, treatment options are very limited and fail in many patients. This work by the Mansfield Laboratory not only demonstrates that C. jejuni can trigger GBS, but also may open the way for a cure.

“What our work has told us is that it takes a certain genetic makeup combined with a certain Campylobacter strain to cause GBS,” Dr. Mansfield says. “The concerning thing is that many of these Campylobacter strains are resistant to antibiotics. Our work in these mouse models has shown that treatment of C. jejuni infections with some antibiotics could actually make GBS worse.”

Antibiotic treatment was shown to exacerbate neurological signs, lesions, and the amount of auto-antibodies produced.

“I believe these models hold great potential for discovery of new treatments for this paralysis,” says Dr. Mansfield. “Many patients with GBS are critically ill, and they can’t participate in clinical trials. The models can help to solve this.”

Mansfield now wants to move forward quickly to test drugs against GBS in the models.

“Of course new treatments would be wonderful,” she says, “but therapeutics to prevent GBS from developing in the first place in patients infected with C. jejuni would be the best strategy so that people don’t have to suffer with paralysis.”  The team’s findings will be published in the scientific journal Journal of Autoimmunity in December 2016.

More information: The paper, “Guillain Barré Syndrome is induced in Non-Obese Diabetic (NOD) mice following Campylobacter jejuni infection and is exacerbated by antibiotics,” published in the Journal of Autoimmunity.

Additional press is available at MSUToday.

Research was funded in whole by: the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. N01-AI-30058 and Grant No. U19AI090872 supporting the Michigan State University Enterics Research Investigational Network, Cooperative Research Center. 

Contact: Kristen Flory, Marketing & Communications Director, MSU College of Veterinary Medicine

517-355-5165 | florykri@cvm.msu.edu