Induction of experimental autoimmune hypophysitis in SJL mice.

Autoimmune hypophysitis can be reproduced experimentally by the injection of pituitary proteins mixed with an adjuvant into susceptible mice(1). Mouse models allow us to study how diseases unfold, often providing a good replica of the same processes occurring in humans. For some autoimmune diseases, like type 1A diabetes, there are models (the NOD mouse) that spontaneously develop a disease similar to the human counterpart. For many other autoimmune diseases, however, the model needs to be induced experimentally. A common approach in this regard is to inject the mouse with a dominant antigen derived from the organ being studied. For example, investigators interested in autoimmune thyroiditis inject mice with thyroglobulin(2), and those interested in myasthenia gravis inject them with the acetylcholine receptor(3). If the autoantigen for a particular autoimmune disease is not known, investigators inject a crude protein extract from the organ targeted by the autoimmune reaction. For autoimmune hypophysitis, the pathogenic autoantigen(s) remain to be identified(4), and thus a crude pituitary protein preparation is used. In this video article we demonstrate how to induce experimental autoimmune hypophysitis in SJL mice.