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Complete Freund's adjuvant immunization prolongs survival in experimental prion disease in mice
Author(s) -
Tal Yuval,
Souan Lina,
Cohen Irun R.,
Meiner Zeev,
Taraboulos Albert,
Mor Felix
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of neuroscience research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.72
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1097-4547
pISSN - 0360-4012
DOI - 10.1002/jnr.10474
Subject(s) - immunization , scrapie , adjuvant , immune system , immunology , virology , antibody , vaccination , freund's adjuvant , biology , medicine , disease , prion protein , pathology
We recently reported that immunization of mice with certain self‐prion protein peptides induced specific T‐cell and B‐cell immune responses; importantly, this immunization was associated with a decrease in the number of protease‐resistant PrP Sc particles recoverable in a transplanted, scrapie‐infected syngeneic tumor. The present study was carried out to determine whether immunization with the immunogenic PrP peptides might influence the natural history of experimental scrapie in mice. We immunized C57BL/6 mice with self‐prion peptides in complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) or with CFA alone as a control and then infected the mice with mouse‐adapted scrapie by injection either intraperitoneally or intracerebrally. We report here that immunization with CFA, irrespective of whether prion peptides were present in the inoculum, resulted in marked prolongation of survival of the mice, whether the challenge was intracerebral or intraperitoneal. Mice in the immunized and control groups that died contained equivalent amounts of PrP Sc . Thus, CFA immunization has a therapeutic effect in experimental scrapie in mice, possibly by reducing the rate of PrP Sc accumulation in the brain. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.