Summary
Evaluation of the functional responses of T cells is of importance in determining the mechanism(s) of immunodeficiency resulting from chronic alcohol abuse and other conditions that lead to immune dysfunction. Mice that are chronically exposed to 20% (w/v) ethanol in water develop immunodeficiency and have T cells with abnormal activation profiles, reduced total numbers, increased CD4/CD8 ratios, and an increased memory/naïve phenotype ratio. These cells also have abnormal antigen-specific responses after inoculation of the ethanol mice with model infectious organisms. Study of the functional abnormalities of these cells requires a reliable system that can present appropriate activation stimuli in vitro for the generation of polyclonal or antigen-specific responses in enriched or purified T cells, free of the influence of previously ethanol exposed accessory cells. In this chapter, we describe protocols to assess the T cell response to polyclonal stimulation through the T cell receptor and the use of a model infectious disease bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, that allows evaluation of the T-cell response to specific peptide epitopes of the bacterium after previous inoculation.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by NIH AA 014405 and the Department of Pathology, University of Iowa.
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© 2008 Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Young, B.M., Wiechert, S., Coleman, R.A., Gurung, P., Cook, R.T. (2008). Polyclonal and Antigen-specific Responses of T Cells and T Cell Subsets. In: Nagy, L.E. (eds) Alcohol. Methods in Molecular Biology™, vol 447. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-242-7_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-242-7_19
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