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Plasmacytoid dendritic cells enhance mortality during lethal influenza infections by eliminating virus-specific CD8 T cells
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells enhance mortality during lethal influenza infections by eliminating virus-specific CD8 T cells

Ryan A Langlois and Kevin L Legge
The Journal of immunology (1950), Vol.184(8), pp.4440-4446
04/15/2010
DOI: 10.4049/jimmunol.0902984
PMCID: PMC2851488
PMID: 20220091

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Abstract

Previous studies have shown that the reduction in CD8 T cell immunity observed during high-dose influenza virus infection (IAV) is mediated via lymph node (LN) dendritic cells (DC) that express FasL and drive FasL:Fas (DC:T) induced apoptosis. However, the specific DC subset(s) within the LN and the additional factors required for DC-mediated elimination of IAV-specific CD8 T cells remain unknown. Herein, we demonstrate that plasmacytoid DC (pDC) which downregulate FasL during sublethal, but not lethal, IAV-infection accumulate to greater numbers within the LN of lethal dose infected mice. Further our findings show that pDC from lethal, but not sublethal dose IAV infections, drive elimination of Fas + CD8 T cells and that this elimination only occurs in the absence of TCR recognition of IAV-peptide-MHC class I complexes. Together these results suggest that pDC play a heretofore unknown deleterious role during lethal dose IAV-infections by limiting the CD8 T cell response.

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