Proceedings of the 10th International Colloquium on Paratuberculosis

#59
CD4 T cells from intestinal biopsies <strong>of</strong> Crohn’s disease patients react to Mycobacterium avium
subspecies paratuberculosis.
Ingrid Olsen, Stig Tollefsen, Claus Aagaard, Liv Jorun Reitan, John P. Bannantine, Peter Andersen, Ludvig M.
Sollid, Knut E. A. Lundin
National Veterinary Institute, Oslo, Norway; Centre for Immune Regulation, Institute <strong>of</strong> Immunology, University <strong>of</strong>
Oslo, Norway; Rikshospitalet University Hospital, Oslo, Norway; Department <strong>of</strong> Infectious Disease Immunology,
Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark; National Animal Disease Center, USDA-ARS, Ames, Iowa, USA
The role <strong>of</strong> Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) in Crohn’s disease (CD) remains controversial.
One issue that has been raised is <strong>the</strong> lack <strong>of</strong> data showing a cellular immune response to MAP. Earlier
studies have mostly focused on responses in peripheral blood which have several limitations. We thus wanted
to characterize <strong>the</strong> response in <strong>the</strong> affected tissue and consequently made T-cell lines from intestinal biopsies
<strong>of</strong> patients with CD (n=11), ulcerative colitis (UC) (n=13) and controls (n=10). The T cells from CD patients
showed higher proliferation in response to MAP compared to UC patients (p