Female sex hormones suppress development of collagen-induced arthritis in mice

✍ Scribed by Rikard Holmdahl; Liselott Jansson; Mikael Andersson

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 717 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-3591
• DOI: 10.1002/art.1780291212

✦ Synopsis

We have previously reported that male DBM1 mice are more susceptible to collagen-induced arthritis than are females. Here we report that oophorectomy makes female mice as susceptible to collagen arthritis as are normal males. Induction of collagen-induced arthritis in mice is a T cellaependent process. The role of female sex hormones in modulating T cellaependent autoimmune diseases is discussed.

Sex-linked mechanisms are known to influence immunologic functions in a complicated and nonuniform way. For example, the antibody response after immunization is often higher in females than in males, whereas T cell-mediated reactions generally are not increased or may even be weaker in females compared with males (1,2).

Autoimmune reactions and experimental autoimmune diseases also appear to be influenced by sex in a non-uniform manner. Thus, in spontaneous autoimmune lupus, females display higher autoantibody titers, as well as more severe disease manifestations, than do males (3). In New Zealand black x New Zealand white (NZB X NZW) mice, the strain in which sex-mediated mechanisms have been most extensively studied, these effects are largely due to the actions of estrogenic hormones, whereas testosterone From the