| Literature DB >> 9367411 |
M Mizugaki1, T Yamaguchi, S Ishiwata, H Shindo, T Hishinuma, S Nozaki, M Nose.
Abstract
Recent reports suggest that DNA methylation is involved in the cause of autoimmune disease. We investigated the alteration of DNA methylation levels in lupus strains of mice, MRL/lpr as a model, which develop an age-dependent lymphadenopathy and autoimmune disease. DNA methylation levels of thymus and axillary lymph nodes in 20-week-old MRL/lpr mice, which are in an autoimmune disease state, were lower than those of 4-week-old MRL/lpr mice with no symptoms as yet. No significant changes were observed in MRL/+ strain mice, which seemed normal at least 20 weeks, while DNA methylation levels in the spleen of both strains of mice increased significantly from the age of 4 to 20 weeks. However, no significant changes of DNA methylation levels in peripheral blood were observed with ageing in MRL strains. Moreover, we clarified that administration of 5-azacytidine had a strong effect on longer survival of MRL/lpr mice and reduced DNA methylation levels in the axillary lymph nodes and spleen. The possible relevance of DNA methylation levels to the progression of autoimmune disease is discussed.Entities:
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Year: 1997 PMID： 9367411 PMCID： PMC2265501 DOI： 10.1111/j.1365-2249.1997.tb08326.x
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Clin Exp Immunol ISSN： 0009-9104 Impact factor: 4.330