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HCV

Cellular immune responses against persistent hepatitis C virus: gone but not forgotten

P Klenerman, N Semmo

Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr P Klenerman
Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9TU, UK; paul.klenerman@ndm.ox.ac.uk

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Failure to sustain antiviral T cell responses is a hallmark of persistent hepatitis C virus infection. Early loss of T cell proliferative capacity after acute disease appears to be an important component of this process. T cell function may, however, be restored in vitro with interleukin 2

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Keywords: hepatitis C virus; CD8+ T cells; CD4+ T cells; protective immunity; immunotherapy

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Although the prevalence of persistent hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is very high, acute HCV infection is rarely encountered by most clinicians. The reasons for this include often a relatively mild presentation, as well as failure to seek medical attention. Nevertheless, analysis of the events which occur during and following acute HCV infection is very important in trying to disentangle why some infections persist and others are cleared—defining so-called "correlates of protection". Thus immunological studies of acute HCV are on the one hand potentially extremely informative and on the other very difficult to do.

Acute infection may be followed by rapid clearance or—in the majority of cases—lifelong persistence, often preceded by a period of partial control. Over the past decade a substantial amount of data have been generated pointing to a crucial role for cellular immune responses in determining these outcomes.¹ There is no doubt that a number of . . . [Full text of this article]

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Early impairment of hepatitis C virus specific T cell proliferation during acute infection leads to failure of viral clearance

A Folgori, E Spada, M Pezzanera, L Ruggeri, A Mele, A R Garbuglia, M P Perrone, P Del Porto, E Piccolella, R Cortese, A Nicosia, A Vitelli on behalf of the Acute Hepatitis C Italian Study Group
Gut 2006 55: 1012-1019. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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