VDR and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis: To determine if the SLICK/VDRf/+ mice in which VDR had been partially deleted in early life (3–5 weeks old) had an altered susceptibility to CNS autoimmunity, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) was induced at 8–10 weeks of age using a suboptimal EAE induction protocol in which the amount of peptide (100 μg), mycobacterium concentration (2 mg/ml) in CFA, and pertussis toxin (100 ng) were used at 50% of our standard protocol, allowing for a change in disease incidence or severity to be more readily observed (Figure 4C).