Figure 6.

Time course of response to hinge region “hot-spots” in immunize mice. Mice immunized with full-length hTSHR showed increasing antibody response to the hinge region “hot-spots” throughout the time course of the immunization described in Figure 1. As indicated here an antibody rise started as early as < 5 weeks and plateaued off at week 13 maintaining 85% positivity until the termination of the experiment. Dotted lines indicate immunization time points. Insert: Shows the percentage of hinge region “hot-spot” antibody positive mice by thyroid function at week 10. 56% of the antibody positive mice were in the normal TSH range and 22% were in each of the low and high TSH ranges.