Complete Freund's adjuvant as a confounding factor in multiple sclerosis research

Front Immunol. 2024 Feb 15:15:1353865. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1353865. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) is used as a standard adjuvant for the induction of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the most commonly used animal model in multiple sclerosis studies. Still, CFA induces glial activation and neuroinflammation on its own and provokes pain. In addition, as CFA contains Mycobacteria, an immune response against bacterial antigens is induced in parallel to the response against central nervous system antigens. Thus, CFA can be considered as a confounding factor in multiple sclerosis-related studies performed on EAE. Here, we discuss the effects of CFA in EAE in detail and present EAE variants induced in experimental animals without the use of CFA. We put forward CFA-free EAE variants as valuable tools for studying multiple sclerosis pathogenesis and therapeutic approaches.

Keywords: antigen; complete Freund’s adjuvant; experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis; multiple sclerosis; pain.

Publication types

  • Review
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adjuvants, Immunologic / pharmacology
  • Animals
  • Antigens, Bacterial
  • Encephalomyelitis, Autoimmune, Experimental*
  • Freund's Adjuvant
  • Multiple Sclerosis* / complications

Substances

  • Freund's Adjuvant
  • Adjuvants, Immunologic
  • Antigens, Bacterial

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The authors declare financial support from the Ministry of Science, Technological Development, and Innovations, Republic of Serbia (Contract No. 451-03-47/2023-01/200007 and 451-03-66/2024-03/200007).