Characterisation of dendritic cells in testicular draining lymph nodes in a rat model of experimental autoimmune orchitis

SEBASTIAN HOLLWEGS; EVA SCHNEIDER ; MARIANA MARDIROSIAN ; VANESA A. GUAZZONE ; ANDREAS MEINHARDT ; MONIKA FIJAK

Giessen

Workshop; 5th International Workshop ?MOLECULAR ANDROLOGY 2009?; 2009

European Academy of Andrology

Experimental autoimmune orchitis (EAO) in rats serves as a model to investigate inflammatory based testicular impairment, which is a significant cause of male infertility. As potent antigen presenting cells dendritic cells (DC) are the pace makers of the immune response and presentation of self antigens by DC is likely to play an important role in the initiation of autoimmunity and its progression. The maturation and/or activation state of DC is regarded as a control point for the induction of either peripheral tolerance or autoimmunity. Cross talk between mature DC and effector CD4+ T-cells in secondary lymphoid tissues is essential for the IL-12/Th1 as well as IL-23/Th17 axis in development of autoimmune diseases. Our recent identification of testicular autoantigens such as Hsp70 in EAO animals prompted us to characterize the population of DC from testicular draining lymph nodes (LN) to better understand their role in testicular inflammation. Enriched fractions of DC from testicular draining lymph nodes (TLN) and from LN at the site of immunization (ILN) were isolated by magnetic bead separation from untreated, adjuvant control and EAO adult Wistar rats. The expression profile of mRNAs for IL-10, IL-12p35, IL-12p40/IL23p40 and IL-23p19 was determined by standard and real-time RT-PCR. Our results showed substantial upregulation of the mRNA expression of all investigated cytokines in TLN and ILN from the EAO animals compared to adjuvant and untreated control group. No significant changes were detected between adjuvant and untreated controls. In summary, our data suggest that the majority of DC in TLN and ILN from EAO animals are mature, present antigens to T cells and stimulate them to induce immunological response against testicular antigen in form of autoimmune inflammatory disease.