Im Se Jin, Sung Young Chul
POSTECH, Cellular Immunology Lab.
Korean J Hepatol. 2006 Jun;12(2):154-62.
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) currently infects more than 400 million people worldwide and they are at risk of developing chronic liver disease, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The immune response to HBV-encoded antigens is responsible both for viral clearance and for disease pathogenesis during HBV infection. While the humoral antibody response to viral envelope antigens contributes to the clearance of circulating virus particles, the cellular immune responses to the envelope, nucleocapsid, and polymerase antigens were known to eliminate virus in infected hepatocytes through cytolytic as well as noncytolytic mechanisms. Liver injury could be initiated by an immune response against HBV, but mainly resulted from HBV non-specific lymphocytes and macrophages. There are growing evidences that T helper 1 memory T cells play a predominant role in suppressing viral replication mainly by IFN-gamma through noncytolytic antiviral mechanism. Elucidation of the immunological and virological basis for HBV infection may yield effective immunotherapeutic and antiviral strategies to terminate chronic HBV infection.
目前，全球有超过4亿人感染乙型肝炎病毒（HBV），他们面临着发展为慢性肝病、肝硬化和肝细胞癌的风险。对HBV编码抗原的免疫反应在HBV感染期间既负责病毒清除，也参与疾病发病机制。虽然对病毒包膜抗原的体液抗体反应有助于清除循环病毒颗粒，但已知对包膜、核衣壳和聚合酶抗原的细胞免疫反应可通过细胞溶解和非细胞溶解机制清除感染肝细胞中的病毒。肝损伤可能由针对HBV的免疫反应引发，但主要由HBV非特异性淋巴细胞和巨噬细胞导致。越来越多的证据表明，辅助性T细胞1记忆性T细胞主要通过γ干扰素通过非细胞溶解抗病毒机制在抑制病毒复制中起主要作用。阐明HBV感染的免疫学和病毒学基础可能会产生有效的免疫治疗和抗病毒策略，以终止慢性HBV感染。
