Erschienen in:
01.08.2004 | Viewpoint
Lymphopenia and autoimmune diseases
verfasst von:
Hendrik Schulze-Koops
Erschienen in:
Arthritis Research & Therapy
|
Ausgabe 4/2004
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Excerpt
More than 30 years ago, the occurrence of spontaneous autoimmune thyroiditis was observed in rodents that were made severely T-cell lymphopenic by neonatal thymectomy or by thymectomy at week five after birth together with concomitant low dose irradiation [
1,
2]. Following these reports, numerous studies have shown that manipulations that generate functional T-cell lymphopenia result in the development of a variety of organ-specific autoimmune diseases in animal models (reviewed in [
3]). Impressive examples of such manipulations include: IL-2 knockout mice, that develop prominent autoimmune colitis [
4]; T-cell receptor-alpha chain deficient mice, that develop inflammatory bowel disease associated with an array of autoantibodies [
5,
6]; T-cell receptor-α chain transgenic mice [
7]; neonatal application of cytotoxic intervention protocols, such as cyclosporine A [
8]; total lymphoid irradiation [
9] or thymectomy [
10]; and lymphotoxic treatment of adult animals [
11]. …
