Diabetes, Vol 42, Issue 12 1823-1828, Copyright © 1993 by American Diabetes Association
Lymph node T-cells do not optimally transfer diabetes in NOD mice
F Lepault, C Faveeuw, JJ Luan and MC Gagnerault
Hopital Necker, CNRS URA 1461, Paris, France.
The nonobese diabetic mouse in a model of spontaneous development of
autoimmune type I diabetes. The disease can be induced in young, irradiated
recipients by injecting splenic T-cells from diabetic donors. The adoptive
transfer of diabetes requires the presence of both CD4+ and CD8+ splenic
T-cell subsets. To test whether diabetogenic cells distribute in other
lymphoid organs of diabetic mice, we first analyzed lymph node cells. Lymph
node cells were much less efficient in transferring diabetes than
splenocytes. This inefficacious transfer was not attributable to the
absence of hematopoietic precursors or a lack of macrophages. Lymph node
cells did not protect from the transfer of diabetes by splenocytes,
indicating the absence of suppressor cells. Although CD8+ lymph node
T-cells seemed functionally comparable to CD8+ splenocytes, CD4+ lymph node
T-cells failed to cooperate with CD8+ splenocytes to transfer diabetes. Our
study suggests that diabetogenic cells are not evenly distributed in the
different lymphoid organs. This may reflect a differential migration
pattern of pathogenic T-cells in this animal model.