Fig. 2

Clinical disease of passive MBP-EAE is more severe in LEWzizi rats. a Time axis of EAE experiments. b Injection scheme. MBP-specific activated CD4⁺ T cells originating from Lewis and LEWzizi rats were injected into naïve 4-month-old (4 M) or old 8-month-old (8 M) Lewis and LEWzizi recipient rats. c EAE disease course of 4 M and 8 M rats. Clinical signs of disease were scored on a daily basis as described in the Materials and Methods section. Blue shaded areas (“atypical LEWzizi phenotype”) indicate the score range that would overlap with LEWzizi-specific gait abnormalities. At the peak of disease (day 6), differences in disease scores between Lewis and LEWzizi rats (independent of the genotype of injected T cells) were tested via unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-tests. Graphs represent mean ± SEM. Each experimental group comprises 12–17 (day 1 to day 6) or 6–9 rats (day 7 to day 10). **, p-value < 0.01. d Start of clinical disease. EAE onset was defined as the first day of clinical signs > 0. Graphs represent mean ± SD. Each experimental group comprises 12–17 rats. Reported statistics result from unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-tests (data pooled according to rat genotype and independent of T cell genotype). ***, p-value < 0.001; ****, p-value < 0.0001