A Study of Autoreactive T Cells in Drug-Induced Autoimmune Skin Disease

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

1) In the drug eruptions, which were classified to the subgroup of acute cutaneous GVHD (graft-verusus-host disease) type from the clinicohistopathological findings, we observed the dominant infiltration of CD8+ T cells in the epidermis, depletion/reduction of CD1+ epidermal Langerhans cells and remarkable expression of HLA-DR/ICAM-1 on the kerationcytes. These findings are the same as acute cutaneous GVHD itself appeared after bone marrow transplantation and blood transfusion, indicating that essentially the same pathomechanism is involved in the both conditions, and also that enhancement of T cells with cytotoxic activity and the inflammatory cytokines such as IFNgamma and TNFalpha may play an important role in development of GVHD itself and GVHD-like reaction by drugs.2) In the footpad reactions by local transfer of sulfhydril drug, tiopronin (TP)-sensitized lymph node cells (LC) and spleen cells (SC), IFNgamma and TNFalpha were also required for the full induction of GVHD-like reactions.3) We have already revealed that IFNgamma, which is released from the activated T cells, enhances the expression of bullous pemphigoid (BP) antigen on the cultured keratinocytes by flow cytometory. In this study we revealed the enhanced expression of BP antigen in the messenger RNA levels by slot blot hybridization. These results reconfirmed the possibility that cytokines such as IFNgamma from the activated T cells might be involved in development of autoimmune bullous pemphigoid.