Autoimmune murine thyroiditis. VIII. Role of different thyroid antigens in the induction of experimental autoimmune thyroiditis.

Mice of the C57Br strain, which are susceptible to the induction of autoimmune thyroiditis with mouse thyroglobulin, and C57Bl mice, which are resistant, were immunized with human and rabbit thyroglobulins in Freund's complete adjuvant. Susceptible strain C57Br developed higher degrees of thyroid infiltration than the resistant strain. The results indicate that the responses to xenogeneic (foreign) thyroglobulins parallel allogeneic and syngeneic (mouse) thyroglobulin. BSVS mice, which are highly susceptible to thyroiditis, were immunized with mouse thyroid extract from five different mouse strains including syngeneic antigen. Recipients of C57Bl and DBA thyroid extracts showed lower indices of pathology than recipients of similar extracts from C3H, BSVS and non-inbred CF-1 mice. The results suggest that there is a difference in the immunogenicity of mouse thyroid extracts from different strains. Purified thyroglobulin was prepared from congenic strains B10.D2 (H-2d, resistant) and B10Br (H-2k, susceptible). H-2k thyroglobulin gave a greater response in both H-2k and H-2d mice than H-2d thyroglobulin.