title: The transfer of autoimmune diabetes in NOD mice can be inhibited or accelerated by distinct cell populations present in normal splenocytes taken from young males.
abstract: The NOD mouse is characterized by the development of spontaneous autoimmune diabetes which begins with a peri-islet lymphocyte infiltration of the pancreas around 6 weeks of age and progresses to overt diabetes in 50-60% of females from about 12 weeks. Although infiltration occurs around islets in males, the incidence of overt diabetes is much less (about 1%) and suggests that there may be more effective regulatory circuits in these animals. This possibility was examined by using splenocytes from young males to reconstitute irradiated male recipients 6 d before the transfer of diabetogenic spleen cells from spontaneously diabetic females. Those animals which were not reconstituted with male spleen cells developed diabetes 3-5 weeks later, whereas the majority of the reconstituted mice remained normoglycaemic. Characterization of the protective population demonstrated a role for CD4+ T cells. An additional observation was that splenocytes from young normal males also contained a population of non-T cells which could advance the diabetogenic transfer of disease by at least a week.
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology, University College, London, UK.
authors.forename: P R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Hutchings
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cooke
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015496:CD4-Positive T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology; D003922:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1 / Q000276:immunology* / Q000517:prevention & control; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005260:Female; D008212:Lymphocyte Depletion; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D013154:Spleen / Q000166:cytology / Q000637:transplantation; D014916:Whole-Body Irradiation