Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 23, 2026
Experimental Autoimmune Uveitis: An Intraocular Inflammatory Mouse Model
Published on: January 12, 2022
Modelling experimental uveitis: barrier effects in autoimmune disease
David Nicholson1, Emma C Kerr, Owen G Jepps
1School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Medical Sciences Building, University of Bristol, University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TD, UK.
Objective And Design:
A mathematical analysis of leukocytes accumulating in experimental autoimmune uveitis (EAU), using ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and incorporating a barrier to cell traffic.
Materials And Subjects:
Data from an analysis of the kinetics of cell accumulation within the eye during EAU.
Methods:
We applied a well-established mathematical approach that uses ODEs to describe the behaviour of cells on both sides of the blood-retinal barrier and compared data from the mathematical model with experimental data from animals with EAU.
Results:
The presence of the barrier is critical to the ability of the model to qualitatively reproduce the experimental data. However, barrier breakdown is not sufficient to produce a surge of cells into the eye, which depends also on asymmetry in the rates at which cells can penetrate the barrier. Antigen-presenting cell (APC) generation also plays a critical role and we can derive from the model the ratio for APC production under inflammatory conditions relative to production in the resting state, which has a value that agrees closely with that found by experiment.
Conclusions:
Asymmetric trafficking and the dynamics of APC production play an important role in the dynamics of cell accumulation in EAU.
