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Complement Component C2 Deficiency

Encyclopedia of Medical Immunology

Definition

C2 deficiency is a relatively common complement deficiency with an estimated prevalence of 1/20,000 in the Caucasian population. In the great majority of cases, the deficiency is caused by homozygosity for a 28-base pair deletion in the C2 gene, which is located in the MHC haplotype HLA-B*18, S042, DRB1*15. Major disease associations are increased susceptibility for infections with encapsulated bacteria, development of SLE or SLE-like disease, and slightly increased risk for atherosclerosis. The SLE disease is generally mild with skin symptoms and the autoantibody profile differs from that in SLE in general since positivity for anti-dsDNA antibodies is rare. From the prevalence it is concluded that many CD2 individuals are apparently healthy. A probable explanation is that complement activation may go through bypass mechanisms involving C1q or MBL, C4, and the alternative pathway. In addition C2D individuals show good response in antibody production after vaccination...

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Correspondence to Gunnar Sturfelt .

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Sturfelt, G., Truedsson, L. (2016). Complement Component C2 Deficiency. In: MacKay, I., Rose, N. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medical Immunology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9209-2_10-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9209-2_10-1

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Complement Component C2 Deficiency
    Published:
    22 February 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9209-2_10-2

  2. Original

    Complement Component C2 Deficiency
    Published:
    09 August 2017

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9209-2_10-1