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Review
. 2006:311:117-53.
doi: 10.1007/3-540-32636-7_5.

The privacy of T cell memory to viruses

R M Welsh  1 , S K Kim, M Cornberg, S C Clute, L K Selin, Y N Naumov
Affiliations
Review

The privacy of T cell memory to viruses

R M Welsh et al. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol. 2006.

Abstract

T cell responses to viral infections can mediate either protective immunity or damaging immunopathology. Viral infections induce the proliferation of T cells specific for viral antigens and cause a loss in the number of T cells with other specificities. In immunologically naive hosts, viruses will induce T cell responses that, dependent on the MHC, recognize a distinct hierarchy of virus-encoded T cell epitopes. This hierarchy can change if the host has previously encountered another pathogen that elicited a memory pool ofT cells specific to a cross-reactive epitope. This heterologous immunity can deviate the normal immune response and result in either beneficial or harmful effects on the host. Each host has a unique T cell repertoire caused by the random DNA rearrangement that created it, so the specific T cells that create the epitope hierarchy differ between individuals. This "private specificity" seems of little significance in the T cell response of a naive host to infection, but it is of profound importance under conditions of heterologous immunity, where a small subset of a cross-reactive memory pool may expand and dominate a response. Examples are given of how the private specificities of immune responses under conditions of heterologous immunity influence the pathogenesis of murine and human viral infections.

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