EXPERIMENTAL AUTOIMMUNE UVEITIS AS ANIMAL-MODEL FOR HUMAN POSTERIOR UVEITIS

Uveitis is an intraocular inflammatory disease that mostly affects chi ldren and young adults. It is one of the major causes of blindness in young individuals in India and the world. It is responsible for about 10 per cent of total visual impairment. Unfortunately, etiological dia gnosis is mot evident in a majority of these patients. It is generally felt that autoimmune mechanism mag be involved in so called 'idiopath ic' cases which has led to search for the putative autoantigens in exp erimental animal models. It has been demonstrated that experimental au toimmune uveitis (EAU) can be elicited against several retinal protein s in rats, mice and sub-human primates. These include the S-antigen, a major protein on retinal photoreceptor cell, interphotoreceptor retin oid binding protein (IRBP) and several others. There are many similari ties between clinical entities and the EAU, but the EAU differs from t he clinical conditions in being self-limited, and requiring complete F reund's adjuvant for induction of the disease. The disease can be indu ced only in susceptible strains. Nevertheless, use of the EAU model ha s allowed for identification of disease causing epitopes of antigens a nd evaluation of disease modifying strategies which could be applied i n clinical situations. There has been significant progress in this fie ld, but still a lot more is required to be learnt to translate it into clinical practice.