Suppression of collagen type II-induced arthritis by transfer of lymphoid cells from rats immunized with collagen.

Rats were immunized with type II collagen to induce polyarthritis. Spleen and lymph node cells were taken at various times and transferred to normal syngeneic animals. Disease was not observed in recipients of cells taken from donors either during the pre-clinical phase or the acute clinical phase of the disease. However, arthritis could not be induced in the recipient animals that had received cells taken from donors during the preclinical phase. Animals receiving cells from donors with clinical disease appeared to have a normal susceptibility to disease induced subsequently. In contrast with the differences in their susceptibility to induced disease, all recipient animals made unmodified antibody responses to a challenging injection of type II collagen. The results showed that before the appearance of clinical disease in CII immunized rats, there were cells in the spleen and lymph nodes that inhibit the development of disease but not antibody responses.