Lm. Stasiuk et al., COLLAGEN-INDUCED ARTHRITIS IN DBA 1 MICE - CYTOKINE GENE ACTIVATION FOLLOWING IMMUNIZATION WITH TYPE-II COLLAGEN/, Cellular immunology, 173(2), 1996, pp. 269-275
Immunization of DBA/1 mice with bovine type II collagen (CII) in compl
ete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) leads to collagen induced arthritis as evi
denced by joint inflammation. In this study, reverse transcription-pol
ymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to demonstrate the activation
of genes encoding for IL-2, IFN-gamma, and IL-10 in the lymph nodes f
rom both CII-immunized and control CFA-immunized DBA/1 mice, at Days 1
0, 40, and 70 after immunization, in the absence of any IL-5 or IL-13
transcription, By quantitative RT-PCR, the levels of IFN-gamma mRNA in
response to CII could not be quantitatively differentiated from the I
FN-gamma transcribed in response to CFA alone. In the joints of CII-im
munized mice, IL-1 beta and IL-10 mRNA were found in the absence of IL
-5 or IFN-gamma. Synovial IL-1 beta and IL-10 were expressed most stro
ngly at the time of clinical symptoms, 40 days after immunization. Tog
ether, these findings suggest that immunization with CII in CFA induce
s a type 1 response against the adjuvant, giving a cytokine environmen
t which influences the T cells responding to CII to become type 1 T ce
lls. This is manifested here by the appearance of gene activation in s
ynovial tissue of collagen-immunized mice, but not in adjuvant-immuniz
ed control animals. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.