I am planning to use a BALB/C mice for inducing humoral or immunogenic responses. In literature it is reported that the authors used female mice for this kind of experiments, and this same procedure is reported in all articles that I read. What is the scientific reason for this? The ethical committee need this justification before they approve my proposal.
Dear Jose
Very interesting question. There is an interesting paper you may want to referhttp://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/5/11/913.long
There are several differences between male and female immune response:
Females are more responsive to adaptive immunity while males have better innate immunity (after puberty). This leads to an argument for the role of hormones in the basic differences in immune response.
Dear Ravi, the link you have shared has nothing to do with the subject, Could you check?
Dear Dr Jose and Ravi,
It is a hot topic!
I would like to share my presentation last Decemebr, 2013 in front of BK21 programme graduate students.
Entitled "Sexual dimorphism even in vitro !!"
You will find a suitable answer for your question, I am sure!
Regards,
Islam
Thanks Ravi for your answer, but the cited article does not mention anything that I could refer.
Female immune system is weak compared with the male counterpart. So it is always advisable to take female mice to increase the probability of the cancer to get induced with the cells.
In addition to different of immunosystem which encourge uses of female in expermental studies, some scientists also looking for changes in offsprings and of course the female mice is the choice also
Dear All
Wrong attachment, sorry. Please see the right one
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16504066
BMC Immunol. 2006 Feb 22;7:2.
Sexual dimorphism in immune response genes as a function of puberty.
Lamason R1, Zhao P, Rawat R, Davis A, Hall JC, Chae JJ, Agarwal R, Cohen P, Rosen A, Hoffman EP, Nagaraju K.
AuthoAbstract
BACKGROUND:
Autoimmune diseases are more prevalent in females than in males, whereas males have higher mortality associated with infectious diseases. To increase our understanding of this sexual dimorphism in the immune system, we sought to identify and characterize inherent differences in immune response programs in the spleens of male and female mice before, during and after puberty.
RESULTS:
After the onset of puberty, female mice showed a higher expression of adaptive immune response genes, while males had a higher expression of innate immune genes. This result suggested a requirement for sex hormones. Using in vivo and in vitro assays in normal and mutant mouse strains, we found that reverse signaling through FasL was directly influenced by estrogen, with downstream consequences of increased CD8+ T cell-derived B cell help (via cytokines) and enhanced immunoglobulin production.
CONCLUSION:
These results demonstrate that sexual dimorphism in innate and adaptive immune genes is dependent on puberty. This study also revealed that estrogen influences immunoglobulin levels in post-pubertal female mice via the Fas-FasL pathway
Because males and females have different resistance to different disease. In your model, probably female are more resistant to the disease you are studying. And are easier to handle..
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