A neonatally tolerant mouse model to assess pathogenicity of human autoantibodies.

Since certain autoimmune diseases, including myasthenia gravis and pemphigus vulgaris can be reproduced in mice by passive transfer of immunoglobulins from affected patients, we assessed whether this procedure could be optimised. Repeated injections of human IgG into mice during pregnancy induced tolerance to human IgG in the litter, and this persisted for at least 9 months. We show that three different human autoantibodies, to mitochondria, centromere and collagen, were retained in the serum of neonatally tolerized mice, but pathogenic effects of these particular autoantibodies were not demonstrable over the four week time scale of our experiments. However, our model should be applicable to studies on human autoantibodies which might damage the appropriate tissue in a heterologous species.