Academic Program
Immunology & Microbiology
UMMS Affiliation
Department of Pathology
Publication Date
2015-02-01
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Allergy and Immunology | Immunology and Infectious Disease | Immunology of Infectious Disease | Immunopathology | Microbiology | Virology | Virus Diseases
Abstract
Regulatory T (Treg) cells are important in the maintenance of self-tolerance, and the depletion of Treg cells correlates with autoimmune development. It has been shown that type I interferon (IFN) responses induced early in the infection of mice can drive memory (CD44hi) CD8 and CD4 T cells into apoptosis, and we questioned here whether the apoptosis of CD44-expressing Treg cells might be involved in the infection-associated autoimmune development. Instead, we found that Treg cells were much more resistant to apoptosis than CD44hi CD8 and CD4 T cells at days 2 to 3 after lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection, when type I IFN levels are high. The infection caused a downregulation of the interleukin-7 (IL-7) receptor, needed for survival of conventional T cells, while increasing on Treg cells the expression of the high-affinity IL-2 receptor, needed for STAT5-dependent survival of Treg cells. The stably maintained Treg cells early during infection may explain the relatively low incidence of autoimmune manifestations among infected patients.
IMPORTANCE: Autoimmune diseases are controlled in part by regulatory T cells (Treg) and are thought to sometimes be initiated by viral infections. We tested the hypothesis that Treg may die off at early stages of infection, when virus-induced factors kill other lymphocyte types. Instead, we found that Treg resisted this cell death, perhaps reducing the tendency of viral infections to cause immune dysfunction and induce autoimmunity.
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © 2015, American Society for Microbiology. Publisher PDF posted as allowed by the publisher's author rights policy at http://journals.asm.org/site/misc/ASM_Author_Statement.xhtml.
DOI of Published Version
10.1128/JVI.02245-14
Source
J Virol. 2015 Feb;89(4):2112-20. doi: 10.1128/JVI.02245-14. Epub 2014 Dec 3. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Journal of virology
Related Resources
PubMed ID
25473049
Repository Citation
Che JW, Kraft AR, Selin LK, Welsh RM. (2015). Regulatory T cells resist virus infection-induced apoptosis. GSBS Student Publications. https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.02245-14. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/gsbs_sp/1937
Included in
Allergy and Immunology Commons, Immunology of Infectious Disease Commons, Immunopathology Commons, Virology Commons, Virus Diseases Commons