The Role of IFN-alpha in Experimental and Clinical Uveitis

ABSTRACT

Purpose: IFN-α is the only treatment capable of inducing long-term remission in some patients with ocular Behçet’s disease. In this review, we focus on immune mechanisms of IFN-α in animal models and patients and compare the outcome of different clinical studies.

Methods: Review of literature using PubMed and Google and original data from rat models with monophasic/chronic or relapsing experimental autoimmune uveitis treated with IFN-α.

Results: The role of IFN-α and its effect on various cell types were investigated, in some cases with contradictory results. Some patients respond very well to IFN-α treatment, while others are non-responders, which was reflected in the uveitis rat models: relapsing uveitis was ameliorated, the monophasic/chronic disease even aggravated.

Conclusions: Despite intensive investigations in patients and animal models, the immune mechanisms explaining the therapeutic effect of IFN-α in ocular Behçet’s disease are not yet fully understood and need further investigation.

Keywords:

• NK cells
• rat experimental autoimmune uveitis
• regulatory T cells
• Th1
• Th17

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We thank Stephan Thurau for critically reading this manuscript.

DECLARATION OF INTEREST

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Carl-Friedrich von Siemens fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation for post docs to XL.