In part one of this two-part series, Dr. Justin Abbatemarco and Dr. Divyanshu Dubey discuss the original patient cohort with occupational exposure, what motivated this line of research, and the key findings from the initial workup.

Show citation:

Hinson SR, Gupta P, Paramasivan NK, et al. Neural synaptic vesicle autoimmunity following aerosolized porcine neural tissue exposure: insights into autoimmune inflammatory polyradiculoneuropathy. EBioMedicine. 2025;122:106053. doi:10.1016/j.ebiom.2025.106053

Show transcript:

Dr. Justin Abbatemacro:

Hello and welcome. This is Justin Abbatemacro. And I'm here with Divyanshu Dubey to discuss his article published in eBiomedicine, Neurosynaptic Vessel Autoimmunity Following Aerosolized Porcine Neural Tissue Exposure: Insight into Autoimmune Inflammatory Polyradicular Neuropathy.

Dr. Justin Abbatemacro:

Div is a professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic, and we just finished our interview, which I would encourage everyone to check out. Div, maybe we could talk about the original cohort with this occupational exposure, what inspired you to do this work and then what did you find with that initial workup?

Dr. Divyanshu Dubey:

As recounted in our paper, this story began in 2006 to 2008, when a group of swine abattoir workers developed a striking neurological syndrome. These people were previously healthy and suddenly developed severe neuropathic pain, tingling, and variable weakness. The localization stood out, these cases were initially identified by Dan Lachance, who characterized these patients having an autoimmune neuropathy, which was further phenotypically characterized by the work done by Dr. Dyck, calling these inflammatory polyradicular neuropathy based on their nerve root plexus and proximal nerve collisions. And interestingly, a lot of work done back then by Dr. Lennon showed these patients had a unique synaptic staining pattern suggesting there was an underlying antibody driving this disease process. So as I joined the neuroimmunology lab a few years ago, this was one of the areas I wanted to go back and study, not only to find this mystery biomarker which caused the disease in these patients, but also to try and understand how this can help.

Dr. Justin Abbatemacro:

Yeah. I think my takeaway is be curious, right? You hear the story, you see this pattern. Be curious and investigate, and it takes a team or a village to do it.

Dr. Divyanshu Dubey:

100%. So observation, communication between, as you said, a team or a village with like-minded, passionate individuals is one of the successes of many of our discoveries, not just this one in this biomarker space.

Dr. Divyanshu Dubey:

So the technique we use for discovery of these biomarkers was called a phage display where we use the archive sera to test from these patients, the swine abattoir worker patients with autoimmune polyradicular neuropathy. And we ended up finding two dominant antigens, which was synaptophysin and GAP-43, which were present in majority of these cases.

Dr. Justin Abbatemacro:

Please come back and check out part two where we discuss the latest findings and maybe some non-occupational exposures. And check out the podcast. Thanks.