Department of Immunology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, India.
J Viral Hepat. 2011 Oct;18(10):e603-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2893.2011.01489.x. Epub 2011 Jul 12.
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a leading cause of acute viral hepatitis in several developing countries. Information on cellular immune responses during acute hepatitis E is limited. We therefore studied peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients with acute hepatitis E and healthy adult subjects who lacked anti-HEV antibodies for enumeration of various T-cell subsets using flow cytometry and to assess HEV-specific T effector cell responses using interferon-gamma ELISPOT assays. The patients showed increased numbers of CD8(+) cells and CD4(+) CD8(+) cells compared with healthy controls. In addition, the proportion of PBMCs that produced interferon-gamma in response to recombinant HEV open reading frame (ORF) 2 and ORF 3 proteins were found to be higher in patients than in healthy controls. Using pools of 15-mer overlapping peptides corresponding to these recombinant proteins, the immunodominant regions in these proteins for interferon-gamma-producing cells were mapped to regions corresponding to amino acids 181-249 and 301-489 of HEV ORF2 protein. These data provide evidence for the activation of effector T cells during acute hepatitis E. These responses may play a role in viral clearance from the host in patients with HEV infection.
戊型肝炎病毒（HEV）是若干发展中国家急性病毒性肝炎的主要病因。有关急性戊型肝炎期间细胞免疫应答的信息有限。因此，我们研究了急性戊型肝炎患者和缺乏抗-HEV 抗体的健康成年受试者的外周血单核细胞（PBMC），使用流式细胞术计数各种 T 细胞亚群，并使用干扰素-γ ELISPOT 测定评估 HEV 特异性 T 效应细胞应答。与健康对照相比，患者表现出 CD8(+)细胞和 CD4(+) CD8(+)细胞数量增加。此外，与健康对照组相比，对重组 HEV 开放阅读框（ORF）2 和 ORF 3 蛋白产生干扰素-γ的 PBMC 比例在患者中更高。使用对应于这些重组蛋白的 15 个氨基酸重叠肽的池，鉴定出这些蛋白中产生干扰素-γ的细胞的免疫优势区对应于 HEV ORF2 蛋白的氨基酸 181-249 和 301-489 区。这些数据为急性戊型肝炎期间效应 T 细胞的激活提供了证据。这些反应可能在戊型肝炎病毒感染患者的病毒从宿主清除中发挥作用。
