Experimental autoimmune demyelinating diseases: experimental allergic encephalomyelitis and experimental allergic neuritis.

Experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE) and experimental allergic neuritis (EAN) are reproducible models of auto-allergic demyelinating diseases of central and peripheral neurons tissue respectively. EAE bears a close resemblance to naturally-occuring post-infectious encephalomyelitis and EAN to Laundry-Guillain-Barré polyneuritis, in humans. In the experimental models the antigen responsible for disease induction is a different myelin basic protein in each disease. Although a variety of humoral antibodies to various neural fractions are found in both disorders, it has been shown that disease results from cell-mediated immune reactions to specific myelin antigens.