Antipituitary Antibodies Research Articles

Lymphocytic hypophysitis in a man.

Fewer than 20 patients with lymphocytic adenohypophysitis have been reported, all of them women, and it usually occurs during pregnancy or the postpartum period. We report the recognition of lymphocytic adenohypophysitis in a man. The patient presented with anterior hypopituitarism and an intrasellar mass on computed tomography. Antipituitary antibodies, found in only one of the previous patients, were not present in this man, although low titer antinuclear antibodies were found. The implications of this latter finding are unclear. The patient's histocompatibility antigen (HLA) types were A2, B8, Bw58, DR1, and DR5. The degree of pituitary failure seemed out of proportion to the size of the mass seen on computed tomographic scan.

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Evidence for cellular mediated immunity in an animal model of autoimmune pituitary disease.

The anterior pituitary gland can be involved in an inflammatory reaction mediated by lymphocytes that leads to various degrees of dysfunction. In seven rabbits immunized with homologous pituitary tissue in complete Freund's adjuvant, a focal lymphocytic infiltrate, and increased fibrosis was observed in five. These changes were patchy in distribution and limited to the anterior pituitary. No inflammation was observed in five control animals. When incubated with pituitary extract, partially purified lymphocytes from four of the five animals with altered pituitary histology demonstrated a significant (p less than 0.05) stimulation of 3H-thymidine incorporation. Measures of antipituitary antibodies using indirect immunofluorescence were negative in experimental as well as control animals. The present studies characterize the histologic changes and suggest that cellular immunity plays a role in the pathogenesis of experimentally induced autoimmune pituitary disease.