Anti-Acetylcholine Receptor Antibody and Myasthenia Gravis(Receptor Diseases)

Anti-acetylcholine receptor (AChR) antibody is highly disease-specific to myasthenia gravis (MG) comparing to other autoimmune disease, and it is rare to detect other autoimmune antibody. Therefore, immune tolerance system of MG seems to be somewhat different from other autoimmune diseases. However, there is a variation in anti-AChR antibody and anti-AChR antibody is not always correlate with clinical severity. AChR is composed of five subunits, two of α and each one of β, γ and δ and has transmembrane stracture. Fifty percent of antibody to native AChR bind to and more than a half of antibody of patient with MG bind to one region, which is called main immunogenic region (MIR) and is located on α subunit. Peptide mapping of each subunit has high homology. Localization of MIR is not established yet. Farther study of MIR, study of AChR using monoclonal antibody to peptid and establishment of antigenic region on AChR are needed