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Flow Cytometric Analysis of Lymphocyte Infiltration in Central Nervous System during Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis
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Cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of myelin-reactive T cells in patients with multiple sclerosis

Jan D Lünemann1, Sandra Rückert, Florian Kern

  • 1Institute of Neuroimmunology, Neuroscience Research Center, Charité, 10098, Berlin, Germany.

Journal of Neurology
|September 17, 2004
PubMed

Activated myelin-specific T cells are thought to mediate inflammatory tissue damage in multiple sclerosis (MS). Applying a large panel of myelin antigens, we demonstrate the direct ex vivo detection of viable IFN-gamma/TNF-alpha producing CD4+/CD69+ T cells 6 hours after antigenic challenge, by intracellular flow cytometry in 3/33 MS patients and 2/26 healthy controls with calculated frequencies of (mean +/- SEM): 0.031% +/- 0.002% versus 0.037% +/- 0.029%. By comparison, the recently developed IL-7 modified proliferation assay revealed i) a higher number of individuals showing myelin reactivity (17/37 MS patients and 12/24 healthy individuals) and ii) a significant difference in the response to myelin basic protein (MBP) between the two groups in a longitudinal analysis, indicating a higher activity of myelin-specific T cells in MS patients. Our data provide new perspectives in detecting pathogenetically relevant T cells, but clearly demonstrate the different conclusions which must be drawn from various approaches concerning the quantification of autoreactive T cells.

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