Immunosuppressive treatment prevents behavioral deficit in autoimmune MRL-lpr mice

MRL-lpr mice, which develop severe autoimmune disease, explore novel objects less well than do their congenic MRL(-)+/+ controls, in which symptoms of the disease are relatively mild. Moreover, diminished exploration in MRL-lpr mice correlates with the elevated titers of antinuclear antibodies (ANA) in their sera, suggesting that this behavioral deficit is caused by the autoimmune process. To test the hypothesis that autoimmunity affects …