Title
The privacy of T cell memory to viruses
UMMS Affiliation
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; Department of Pathology
Publication Date
2006-10-20
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Life Sciences | Medicine and Health Sciences
Abstract
T cell responses to viral infections can mediate either protective immunity or damaging immunopathology. Viral infections induce the proliferation of T cells specific for viral antigens and cause a loss in the number of T cells with other specificities. In immunologically naive hosts, viruses will induce T cell responses that, dependent on the MHC, recognize a distinct hierarchy of virus-encoded T cell epitopes. This hierarchy can change if the host has previously encountered another pathogen that elicited a memory pool ofT cells specific to a cross-reactive epitope. This heterologous immunity can deviate the normal immune response and result in either beneficial or harmful effects on the host. Each host has a unique T cell repertoire caused by the random DNA rearrangement that created it, so the specific T cells that create the epitope hierarchy differ between individuals. This "private specificity" seems of little significance in the T cell response of a naive host to infection, but it is of profound importance under conditions of heterologous immunity, where a small subset of a cross-reactive memory pool may expand and dominate a response. Examples are given of how the private specificities of immune responses under conditions of heterologous immunity influence the pathogenesis of murine and human viral infections.
Source
Curr Top Microbiol Immunol. 2006;311:117-53.
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Current topics in microbiology and immunology
Related Resources
PubMed ID
17048707
Repository Citation
Welsh RM, Kim S, Cornberg M, Clute SC, Selin LK, Naumov YN. (2006). The privacy of T cell memory to viruses. GSBS Student Publications. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/gsbs_sp/1336