IMMUNOHISTOLOGICAL LOCALIZATION OF AUTOANTIGENS DETECTED BY SERUM AUTOANTIBODIES FROM MICE WITH EXPERIMENTAL AUTOIMMUNE ORCHITIS WITHOUT USING ADJUVANTS

Recently, a murine model of testicular autoimmunity was produced in mi ce by subcutaneous injections with viable syngeneic testicular germ ce lls alone, without depending on the use of any adjuvants or immunopote ntiators. In this article, histological localization of autoantigens d etected by circulating autoantibodies was immunohistochemically studie d by reacting the immune sera with frozen sections of testes from mice of various ages. The study showed that the reactivity of immune sera was detected in the testis sections of normal mice older than 24 days of age but not in those of mice younger than 20 days of age. The immun ostain was detected at proacrosomal, acrosomal, and other cytoplasmic regions of variously shaped developing spermatids but never on pachyte ne spermatocytes, basal compartment germ cells, or the supporting tiss ue of the seminiferous tubules.