In their recent paper “Conditional Deletions of Hdc Confirm Roles of Histamine in Anaphylaxis and Circadian Activity but Not in Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis” Françoise Morin et al., from the Neuroscience Unit at the Hospital Center of Quebec, Laval University, show that a lack of histamine, unexpectedly, has no impact on the development and severity of Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis (EAE), the most common animal model for multiple sclerosis (MS).
In their experiments, Morin et al. created a conditional mouse KO model of Hdc, the enzyme that synthesizes histamine, and induced EAE in these mice. One hallmark of EAE disease progression is the decline of visual acuity, which can be measured as a behavioral readout with our OptoDrum. Consistent with their other observations, visual acuity declined in EAE Hdc-KO animals in the same way as in EAE Hdc-WT animals.
A further example of EAE research can be found in our “OptoDrum Applications” video series.