Immunological Reactivity of Diabetes-Prone BB/OK Rats to Syngeneic Antigens

The spontaneously diabetic BB rat represents an accepted and widely studied animal model for insulin-dependent diabetes (Nakhooda et al., 1977). In BB rats cellular immune processes (Koevary et al., 1983; Logothetopoulos et al., 1984) as well as humoral immunological phenomena (Dyrberg et al., 1984; Martin and Logothetopoulos, 1984) are involved in or are associated with β-cell destruction and the development of diabetes. Not only the endocrine pancreas is affected by immune-mediated cytolytic reactions but also alterations of the exocrine pancreas were morphologically evidenced (Hanenberg et al., 1989). Humoral-mediated cytotoxicity to islet cells, pancreatic exocrine cells and spleen lymphocytes were detected in serum of diabetes-prone BB/OK rats (Schroder et al., 1991).