Maintenance of virus-specific CD4+ T cell responses in chronic HCV infection in blood and liver identified by antigen-specific upregulation of CD154
N Semmo, M Müller, HC Spangenberg, N Kersting, T Altay, P Klenerman, HE Blum, R Thimme · Zeitschrift für Gastroenterologie · 2009 · Heft 09
Bibliografische Angaben
Zusammenfassung
Introduction: Virus-specific CD4+ T cells play a major role in HCV infection. Viral clearance is associated with vigorous and multispecific HCV-specific CD4+ T cell responses while chronic infection has been shown to be associated with weak or absent T cell immune responses. Most of these studies, however, have used functional assays to analyze virus-specific CD4+ T cell responses. Thus, the important question of whether virus-specific CD4+ T cells are completely absent or present, but primarily impaired in specific effector functions during chronic infection, has not been analyzed in detail. Methods: To address…
