Prevention of Insulitis and Diabetes Onset by Treatment With Complete Freund's Adjuvant in NOD Mice

In studies of immune cell defects in autoimmune diabetes mellitus, we observed that complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) prevented the onset of diabetes when injected into 8- to 10-wk-old prediabetic nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice. The prevalence of the onset of diabetes in the CFA-injected versus uninjected NOD mice was 2 of 81 (2.5%) vs. 231 of 379 (61%) among females and 2 of 44 (4.5%) vs. 83 of 336 (25%) among males, respectively. The incidence of histologically identifiable insulitis was significantly reduced in CFA-treated prediabetic female NOD mice (18%) compared with the incidence in female age-matched controls (70%). Splenocytes or Mac-1+–enriched splenocytes from CFA-treated NOD mice, when cotransferred with splenocytes from diabetic mice, reduced the incidence of diabetes provoked by diabetic splenocytes in vivo. In the spleen, CFA injection induced sustained increases in cell proliferation and an associated major increase in the numbers of an immature cell type that expressed the Mac-1 surface antigen. In CFA-treated NOD mice, lymphocytes derived from the spleen failed to respond in vitro to stimulation by the mitogen concanavalin A or by anti-CD3. When cocultured, Mac-1⁺ cells, enriched from the splenocytes of CFA-treated mice, suppressed concanavalin A– or anti-CD3–induced proliferation of T lymphocytes derived from either the spleen or thymus of untreated NOD mice. Therefore, treatment with CFA prevents the development of diabetes, and concomitantly, insulitis while stimulating the generation of splenic suppressor cells that are capable of suppressing diabetogenic T-lymphocyte function in vivo and in vitro.