Highlights
- •We describe the milestones in the historical development of EAE.
- •The clinical and immunological features of EAE in non-human primates.
- •The response to therapy in EAE is contrasted with MS.
- •EAE is shown not to be a model for MS.
Abstract
Experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE) is the commonest, readily induced, organspecific,
autoimmune disorder of laboratory animals of its kind. It is an artificial disorder
brought about by the immunisation of susceptible animals with brain antigens in complete
Freund׳s adjuvant (CFA). Variations can be induced by altering the nature of the antigen
and the conditions involving immunisation. Whilst it is often described as a demyelinating
disease, in strict terms it is not, since the primary pathologic process is not demyelination
but rather an encephalomyelitis that is immunologically induced. Rather, the prototype
demyelinating disease is multiple sclerosis and its variants. In this paper, the central
question we ask is whether the data gleaned from the EAE model contributes to our
understanding of the pathological events in MS. Towards answering this, we describe
the historical development of EAE and its hyperacute form, and discuss the findings
studied extensively in the non-human primate which show that ordinary EAE is an exact
model for ADEM in the human, and that the hyperacute form of EAE is represented by
AHLE in the human. Additionally, we shall comment on the latest research on new variants
of EAE, and explain our opinion regarding the use of EAE models in research aiming
to understand the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 24, 2014
Accepted:
June 17,
2014
Received in revised form:
April 2,
2014
Received:
February 6,
2014
Footnotes
☆We are grateful to Simone Hutchinson for editorial assistance.
Identification
Copyright
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
