Diabetes, Vol 45, Issue 2 165-169, Copyright © 1996 by American Diabetes Association

ARTICLES

Immune response to heat-shock protein correlates with induction of insulitis in I-E alpha d transgenic NOD mice

A Shimada, T Kasatani, I Takei, T Maruyama, H Nomaguchi, Y Ozawa, M Ishii, A Kasuga, F Tashiro, J Miyazaki, K Yamamura and T Saruta
Department of Internal Medicine, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.

To evaluate the correlation between heat-shock protein (HSP) and insulitis, we compared lymphocyte proliferative response to Mycobacterium leprae HSP65 of NOD mice with that of I-E alpha d transgenic NOD (I-E+NOD) mice, which show no insulitis. We found that splenocytes from 15-week-old NOD mice showed a more marked proliferative response to HSP than did those from age-matched I-E+NOD mice (P < 0.05). We then transferred splenocytes from 12-week-old NOD mice into I-E+NOD mice to induce insulitis in the recipients and examined antibody levels against HSP. By 6 weeks posttransfer, insulitis was successfully transferred to four out of five recipients of NOD splenocytes and antibody levels against HSP were significantly higher in the NOD splenocyte-transferred group than in controls, which showed no insulitis (P < 0.01). These results suggest that immune response to HSP correlates with insulitis in NOD mice. Our results support the assertion that HSP is a useful antigen for investigating the etiology of IDDM.
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