[Analyses of T cell clonality in mice with autoimmune sialoadenitis]

T cells are believed to be deeply involved in the pathogenesis of organ-specific autoimmune diseases. However, it remains unknown whether antigen-specific immune responses occur at the inflammatory sites in vivo. As a model of human Sjögren's syndrome, we investigated the T cell clonality of mice with autoimmune sialoadenitis, i.e. IQI/Jcl-(Saegusa et al), thymus grafted (TG) nude-(Taguchi et al), and MRL/lpr-SCID (Hayashi et al) mice; using RT-PCR-SSCP method. As a result, accumulations of distinct T cell clones were demonstrated in the salivary and lacrimal glands in these mice, without V beta restriction. Moreover, a part of the accumulating clones were commonly detected among multiple glands, suggesting the existence of a common and specific immune response probably toward autoantigen(s) expressed on the affected glands.