Cytotoxic T cell interactions with antigen. Potential relevance for drug-related lupus.

Abstract

Understanding of cytotoxic T cell recognition may be relevant to the study of drug-related lupus because either cell-mediated cytotoxicity (CMC) contributes to triggering the disease or CMC provides an informative model to study T cell recognition of foreign antigen. As a model, CMC demonstrates the following: 1) Antigen presentation can occur by membrane insertion of the antigen, covalent modification of the cell surface, or cell surface adsorption of the antigen; these may be modes of presentation by which drug-related antigens induce adverse responses. 2) HLA antigens regulate a wide variety of immune responses; this may be crucial in drug-related lupus since HLA antigens may regulate autoimmune responses, may affect an individual's susceptibility to lupus, and may increase the risk for other specific adverse drug reactions.