AccScience Publishing / MI / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/MI026150033
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Integrated evaluation of immune system perturbation using structural, functional, and cellular immunotoxicity endpoints in rats 

Vinay Lomash 1* Srinivasan Manavalan2 Mahesh Pithala1 Syed Azgar1 Gayathri Venkatesan2
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1 Department of Pathology, RCC Laboratories (India) Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad, Telangana , India
2 Department of Toxicology, RCC Laboratories (India) Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad, Telangana , India
Received: 10 April 2026 | Revised: 10 July 2026 | Accepted: 3 August 2026 | Published online: 8 September 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Evaluation of unintended immunotoxicity represents an important component of nonclinical safety assessment, as perturbation of immune function may increase susceptibility to infection, impair vaccine responses, and disrupt immune homeostasis. Regulatory guidance, including the International Council for Harmonisation S8 immunotoxicity guideline, recommends a weight-of-evidence approach in which observations from conventional toxicological endpoints are integrated with functional immune assays to support interpretation of immune system effects. In this study, an integrated immunotoxicity evaluation framework was applied to examine concordance among structural, functional, and cellular immune endpoints in male Sprague–Dawley rats using a well-characterized immunosuppressive reference compound. Hematological evaluation revealed leukopenia characterized primarily by lymphocyte depletion. Reductions in spleen and thymus weights were accompanied by histopathological evidence of lymphoid depletion in multiple immune tissues, including spleen, thymus, lymph nodes, Peyer’s patches, and bone marrow. Functional immune competence was assessed through hemagglutination antibody responses to sheep red blood cells and delayed-type hypersensitivity assays, both of which demonstrated marked suppression of adaptive immune responses. Flow cytometric immunophenotyping further demonstrated substantial reductions in B cell populations and decreases in CD4+ and CD8+ T cell counts, whereas natural killer-cell populations were comparatively less affected. The concordance of hematological alterations, lymphoid tissue changes, impaired functional immune responses, and lymphocyte subset depletion provides integrated evidence of immune system perturbation. These findings demonstrate that complementary immunotoxicity endpoints collectively support hazard characterization of immune system effects under Good Laboratory Practice conditions.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
ICH S8 guideline
EPA OPPTS 870.7800
Immunotoxicity
TBNK flow cytometry
Delayed-type hypersensitivity
Hemagglutination antibody assay
Immunotoxicity hazard identification
Immunotoxic risk characterization
Funding
This work was supported by RCC Laboratories India Pvt. Ltd. as an internal project sponsorship.
Conflict of interest
All authors are employees of RCC Laboratories India Pvt. Ltd., which provided internal funding for this study. The sponsor had no additional role in influencing the study design, data collection, data analysis or interpretation, preparation of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
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Microbes & Immunity, Electronic ISSN: 3029-2883 Print ISSN: 3041-0886, Published by AccScience Publishing