EBV persistence involves strict selection of latently infected B cells.
J Immunol
; 165(6): 2975-81, 2000 Sep 15.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-10975805
ABSTRACT
EBV is found preferentially in IgD- B cells in the peripheral blood. This has led to the proposal that the recirculating memory B cell pool is the site of long-lived persistent infection. In this paper we have used CD27, a newly identified specific marker for memory B cells, to test this hypothesis. We show that EBV is tightly restricted in its expression. Less than 1 in 1000 of the infected cells in the peripheral blood are naive (IgD+, CD27-) and <1 in 250 are IgD+ memory cells. Furthermore, EBV was undetectable in the self-renewing peripheral CD5+ or B1 cells, a subset that has not been through a germinal center. No such restriction was observed in tonsillar B cells. Therefore, the virus has access to a range of B cell subsets in the lymph nodes but is tightly restricted to a specific long-lived compartment of B cells, the IgD-, CD27+, and CD5- memory B cells, in the periphery. We suggest that access to this compartment is essential to allow the growth-promoting latent genes to be switched off to create a site of persistent infection that is neither pathogenic nor a target for immunosurveillance.
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Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
B-Lymphocyte Subsets
/
Virus Latency
/
Herpesvirus 4, Human
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
J Immunol
Year:
2000
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Estados Unidos