A proteomic approach for studying the pathogenesis of spontaneous equine recurrent uveitis (ERU)

Equine recurrent uveitis (ERU) is a wide spread disease of the eye, which is the main cause for blindness in horses worldwide. Meanwhile, ERU is also accepted as the only reliable spontaneous model for human autoimmune uveitis. We identified and characterized novel autoantigens by analyzing the autoantibody-binding pattern from ERU cases to the retinal proteome. Cellular retinaldehyde-binding protein (CRALBP) and malate dehydrogenase (MDH) were detected as novel ERU autoantigens by this approach. B- and T-cell autoreactivity was detected to both autoantigens in ERU cases. The evaluation of the pathological relevance of CRALBP and MDH brought surprising results. While CRALBP-induced uveitis with high incidence in rats and horses, MDH was only uveitogenic in Lewis rats, but not in the horse itself.