A Variable CD3+ T-Cell Frequency in Peripheral Blood Lymphocytes Associated with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus Development in the LEW.1AR1-iddm Rat

Purpose: The LEW.1AR1-iddm rat is an animal model of human type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), which arose through a spontaneous mutation within the MHC-congenic inbred strain LEW.1AR1 (RT1r2). In contrast to the diabetes-resistant LEW.1AR1 background strain in LEW.1AR1-iddm rats a highly variable T-cell frequency could be observed in peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs). Methods: In this study we therefore characterised the T-cell repertoire within the PBLs of the two strains by flow cytometry analysis and identified the CD3+ T-cell phenotype and its possible linkage to diabetes susceptibility. To map loci conferring susceptibility to variable CD3+ T-cell frequency, backcross strains (N2) were generated with the genetically divergent BN and PAR rats for microsatellite analysis. Results: The LEW.1AR1-iddm rat strain was characterised by a higher variability of CD3+ T-cells in PBLs along with a slightly decreased mean value compared to the LEW.1AR1 background strain. The reason for this reduction was a decrease in the CD4+ T-cell count while the CD8+ T-cell proportion remained unchanged. However, both T-cell subpopulations showed a high variability. This resulted in a lower CD4+/CD8+ T-cell ratio than in LEW.1AR1 rats. Like LEW.1AR1-iddm rats all animals of the backcross populations, N2 BN and N2 PAR rats, also showed large variations of the CD3+ T-cell frequency. The phenotype of variable CD3+ T-cell frequency mapped to the telomeric region of chromosome 1 (RNO1), which is identica