It
is estimated that influenza (flu) results in 31.4 million outpatient visits
each year. New research from the University of Minnesota Medical School
provides insights into how the body can protect itself from immunopathology
during flu.
Many
people who get the flu recover in under two weeks because the immune system is
able to clear the virus, leaving no trace of it in the body. Traditional theory
thought this was accomplished by T cell-mediated killing of all infected cells.
Several years ago, however, Langlois genetically engineered a flu virus that could
permanently label infected cells, which led to the discovery that some infected
cells do survive clearance.
The
new study published in PLOS Pathogens examines why some infected cells evaded T
cell-mediated killing in the lungs of a mouse model. Langlois and his team
identified where the virus was in the lung and what types of cells it was in.
They found that the formerly infected cells are able to clear the virus from
the cell quick enough so that no remnants of the virus remained. Because T
cells can't kill what they can't see, T cells need to see a virus in a cell to
kill that cell.
After
clearance, no virus exists in the lung, but the cells that used to be infected
remain. The team found that those "survivor cells" actually divide
and replenish themselves at a faster rate than uninfected cells.
"One
can imagine that if T cells killed every infected cell, like people once
thought they did, whole airways could be lost," Langlois said. "This
study lends more data to the idea that preventing immunopathology is incredibly
important, and it allows us to better understand the basic mechanisms of how
the body regulates itself to prevent it."
See:
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
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