Relapsing arthritis induced by cell transfer from collagen-immunised mice

Collagen-induced arthritis is a well-established model of chronic inflammat ory arthritis. We here introduce a development of this model which combines the benefits of adoptive transfer and sequential relapse, DBA/1 x B10.Q F1 hybrid mice were immunised with bovine type II collagen, and those which d eveloped a sufficiently high level of arthritis served as donors of spleen cells transferred into BALB/c SCID hosts. After boosting with 500 mu g coll agen, the development of host arthritis was monitored over a period of up t o 256 days, during which up to three successive peaks were detected. In com parison with bovine collagen, mouse collagen used for boosting induced a lo wer initial peak but higher relapses, As expected, the transferred disease was more uniform than the freshly induced one. Previous information suggest s that a shifting cytokine balance between protective and aggressive T cell s may account for the relapse and remission. This study provides a model of relapsing polyarthritis, obtained with normal immunocytes boosted with a w ell-defined protein antigen in animals not themselves treated with adjuvant , As such it is relevant to the etiology of inflammatory arthritis in man, and, if further developed, could be of value for testing new therapeutic st rategies.