Skip to main content

Peripheral Tolerance

Meaning

Peripheral Tolerance is a critical, sophisticated immunological mechanism that actively prevents the adaptive immune system from mounting a destructive, inflammatory response against the body’s own healthy tissues (self-antigens) outside of the primary lymphoid organs. It functions as a necessary, secondary defense mechanism to maintain rigorous self-non-self discrimination when self-reactive T cells inevitably escape the central tolerance mechanism during their development in the thymus. A fundamental breakdown in peripheral tolerance is the molecular hallmark of nearly all organ-specific and systemic autoimmune diseases.