Uveitis in Rabbits with Experimental Allergic Encephalomyelitis

Although much experimental work has been done on endogenous uveitis, there have been relatively few successful animal experiments in which eye disease is produced without direct manipulation of the eye itself. Two recently reported techniques for producing uveitis experimentally show some promise of contributing to our understanding of disease of this type. Collins1,2has described a uveitis, said to resemble sympathetic ophthalmia, in guinea pigs and monkeys sensitized with uveal tissue and the so-called "Freund adjuvants" (killed tubercle bacilli and mineral oil). Uveitis has also been reported to occur (Fog and Bardram3) in pigs with experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE), an experimental demyelinative disease produced by giving animals inoculations of central nervous system antigen plus adjuvants.4In both these experiments, a number of lines of evidence suggest that an autoallergy is produced, in the first case with some component of uveal tissue as the antigen and in the