Macrophages activated by Listeria monocytogenes induce organ-specific autoimmunity.

We have previously reported an experimental autoimmune model induced by the local infection of Listeria monocytogenes. The unilateral inoculation of virulent Listeria into a testis of a normal mouse induced a delayed-type hypersensitivity response against testicular antigen and caused autoimmune orchitis in the contralateral testis. The orchitis was transferred to naive mice by T cells from the intratesticularly infected mice. In this paper, we demonstrated that avirulent Listeria, which lacks the expression of listeriolysin O, failed to induce any anti-testicular responses or contralateral orchitis even when it was inoculated at a high dose into the testis. Furthermore, the intraperitoneal inoculation of virulent Listeria with testicular antigen induced the anti-testicular responses and orchitis although intraperitoneal inoculation of testicular antigen with avirulent Listeria failed to induce them. The difference between virulent and avirulent Listeria in the induction of anti-testicular responses was supposed to be dependent on the difference in macrophage activation by the two bacterial strains because, first, the anti-testicular responses were elicited in normal mice when macrophages from virulent Listeria-infected mice were intraperitoneally transferred with testicular antigen although no viable bacteria were detected from the macrophages, and secondly, in contrast, the intraperitoneal co-inoculation of macrophages from avirulent Listeria-infected mice and testicular antigen failed to elicit any anti-testicular responses. Finally, we found that the virulent Listeria-induced macrophages expressed a higher level of CD80 (B7-1) and CD86 (B7-2) molecules than did the avirulent Listeria-induced macrophages and naive peritoneal macrophages. These results thus suggest that virulent Listeria activates macrophages to induce autoreactive T cells while avirulent Listeria does not. The up-regulation of B7 molecules by virulent Listeria infection is a candidate of the mechanism for the activation of autoreactive T cells.