Matsui M
Department of Internal Medicine, Saga Medical School.
Nihon Rinsho. 1997 Jun;55(6):1537-42.
Oral tolerance is a phenomenon in which an orally ingested antigen induces systemic hyporesponsiveness to the same antigen. If the mechanism can be applied to autoantigens, it could be a promising mode of antigen-specific immunomodulatory treatment for patients with autoimmune diseases. Multiple ingestion of low doses of antigen induces active suppression. Under this condition, suppression of autoimmune attack to target tissues is mediated by anti-inflammatory cytokines such as TGF-beta, which are released from regulatory T cells triggered antigen-specifically. This type of oral tolerance, termed "bystander suppression", has one advantage of needing to know only the major components of the target tissue instead of exact epitopes of autoimmunity. Utilizing this mechanism, clinical trials of oral tolerance therapy are going on among the patients with multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and uveitis.
口服耐受是一种现象，即经口服摄入的抗原可诱导机体对同一抗原产生全身性低反应性。如果该机制能够应用于自身抗原，那么它可能成为一种针对自身免疫性疾病患者的、具有前景的抗原特异性免疫调节治疗方式。多次低剂量摄入抗原可诱导主动抑制。在此条件下，对靶组织自身免疫攻击的抑制由抗炎细胞因子（如转化生长因子-β）介导，这些细胞因子由抗原特异性触发的调节性T细胞释放。这种类型的口服耐受，称为“旁观者抑制”，具有一个优点，即只需要了解靶组织的主要成分，而无需知道自身免疫的确切表位。利用这一机制，口服耐受疗法的临床试验正在多发性硬化症、类风湿性关节炎和葡萄膜炎患者中进行。
