Lymphopenia and autoimmune diseases

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]. …