Transfer of Experimental Autoimmune Thyroiditis of the Mouse by Serum

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The problem of the participation of cellular and humoral factors in the pathogenesis of experimental autoimmune diseases has been discussed for more than two decades without arriving at a definite conclusion. The lack of correlation between the intensity of tissue damage and titer of humoral antibodies (1, 2) in the fact of the existence of such a correlation with delayed skin reactions (3) suggested that autoimmune damage is a delayed type of hypersensitivity. Thereafter, the successful transfer of autoimmune disease by lymphoid cells (4, 5) and the failure of transfer by serum (1,6) enforced the belief that circulating antibodies do not play a causative role in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. However, in recent years, successful serum transfers of autoimmune diseases have been reported. In these experiments rather special procedures were used for inducing the tissue damage: injection of the serum into the target organ (7, 8), the removal of the target organ from donors (9), x-irradiation of donors (10) or recipients (11), and pretreatment of recipients with Freund's adjuvant or 131I (11).

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: