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Immunological tolerance to many self epitopes may be unnecessary

R T Prehn1

  • 1Department of Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle.

Scandinavian Journal of Immunology
|September 1, 1990
PubMed

The demonstration of the existence of antigenic mimicry suggests that immunological tolerance to self antigens may be an insufficient basis for distinguishing self from non-self. However, some data suggest that even in the absence of tolerance most self epitopes would not immunize the host and that tolerance to all self epitopes may, therefore, not be necessary for the prevention of autoimmune disease.

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