revisiting a couple of points on the paper Kat cited:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query...t_uids=12949256
Stone MA, Payne U, Schentag C, Rahman P, Pacheco-Tena C, Inman RD.
Comparative immune responses to candidate arthritogenic bacteria do not confirm a dominant role for Klebsiella pneumonia in the pathogenesis of familial ankylosing spondylitis.
Rheumatology (Oxford). 2004 Feb;43(2):148-55. Epub 2003 Aug 29.
PMID: 12949256

Re: source of support, from the full text of the article:

Quote:

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from Canadian Institute of Health Research. MS is the recipient of a postdoctoral research scholarship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Arthritis Society of Canada. CP-T is the recipient of the Metro Ogryzlo award from the Arthritis Society of Canada. PR is the recipient of a CIHR New Investigator award and an Arthritis Society Junior Scholar Award.

Conflict of interest

The authors have declared no conflicts of interest.





Re: IgA antibody studies in AS patients ("affected individuals") vs. control family members ("unaffected individuals"):
from full text of the article:
Quote:


There was no difference between affected and unaffected individuals with respect to the predominant antibody response to the four candidate microbes[K. pneumoniae, Salmonella typhimurium, Yersinia enterocolitica and Chlamydia trachomatis]. This was true for both IgG and IgA (Table 3A)...