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Neural bystander damage by infiltrating virus-infected T cells and the cytotoxic T lymphocytes in HTLV-I-associated neurological disease
Retrovirology volume 8, Article number: A120 (2011)
We hypothesized that the cytotoxic T lymphocytes(CTLs) play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of human T lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I)-associated myelopathy/tropical spasticparaparesis(HAM/TSP).
One of the most striking features of the cellular immune response in the patients with HTLV-I-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) is the highly increased numbers of HTLV-I-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in the circulation of the blood and the cerebrospinal fluid, nevertheless HTLV-I proviral load in the PBMC remains high in the patients.
To determine the CTL’s association with the pathogenesis of HAM/TSP in the CNS, we developed novel methods of in-situ detection for HTLV-I-specific CTL using HLA/antigen peptide tetramer and for the cells expressing HTLV-I viral protein. We visualized the HTLV-I specific CTLs and HTLV-I-infected cells in autopsied spinal cords of the patients with HAM/TSP.
We demonstrated that HTLV-I-specific CTLs expressing cytotoxic molecules accumulated in the spinal cords from three patients with HAM/TSP and that HTLV-I exclusively infected CD4 positive T lymphocytes but neither resident cells nor macrophages. The phenotype of apoptotic cells was HTLV-I infected CD4+ T lymphocytes or HTLV-I non-infected oligodendrocytes.
The findings suggest a unique pathogenesis for the neuroinflammatory disease that an inflammation of the central nervous system is attributed to the interaction between HTLV-I-infected CD4+ T cells and HTLV-I-specific CD8+ CTLs from the periphery.
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Matsuura, E., Kubota, R., Tanaka, Y. et al. Neural bystander damage by infiltrating virus-infected T cells and the cytotoxic T lymphocytes in HTLV-I-associated neurological disease. Retrovirology 8 (Suppl 1), A120 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-8-S1-A120
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-8-S1-A120
Keywords
- Peptide
- Spinal Cord
- Apoptotic Cell
- Cerebrospinal Fluid
- Neurological Disease