High doses of recombinant interleukin-2 (IL-2) may induce autoimmune lesions in patients receiving experimental cancer treatment. In most cases, the manifestation of autoaggression is transient and organ-specific, predominantly affecting the thyroid gland. Only a fraction of the patients are concerned; most individuals (around 90%) do not develop any signs of autoimmunity. Apparently, endogenously hyperproduced IL-2 may also be implicated in the pathogenesis of autoaggression, since active phases of such disparate autoimmune diseases, like multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus, are accompanied by elevated IL-2 serum levels. Taking into account that immunological self-tolerance is maintained by several distinct mechanisms, we investigated whether IL-2 would interfere with clonal deletion or clonal anergy in vivo. In several experimental systems, IL-2 failed to abolish clonal deletion in the murine thymus or in the peripheral T-cell compartment. IL-2 did not affect the clonal deletion of self-reactive B cells in the bone marrow either. In contrast, IL-2 was found to be effective in abrogating clonal anergy of non-deleted self-specific T cells. Only in the presence of high frequencies of self-specific, potentially autoreactive T cells, IL-2 induces autoimmune lesions. Thus, IL-2 interferes with a mechanism of self-tolerance that guarantees the inactivation of T cells that for some reason have 'escaped' clonal deletion. If these data, obtained in the murine system, are extrapolated to man, then it may be stated that the T-cell repertoire of most individuals has been completely purged from self-reactive cells. Only in the presence of a non-deleted, anergic, potentially auto-reactive T-cell population, could organ-specific disease be induced by IL-2.