B cell repertoire in myasthenia gravis

Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a chronic autoimmune disorder of neuromuscular signal transmission characterized by muscle weakness and fatigability. MG is a prototypical B cell-mediated autoimmune disease affecting 20-50 per 100,000 people. The majority of patients fall into two clinically distinguishable types based on whether they produce autoantibodies targeting the acetylcholine receptor (AChR-MG) or muscle specific kinase (MuSK-MG). The autoantibodies are pathogenic, but whether their generation is associated with broader defects in the B cell repertoire is unknown. To address this question, we performed deep sequencing of the B cell receptor repertoire of AChR-MG, MuSK-MG and healthy subjects.