1 of 2 DESCRIPTION A 24-year-old female presented with fever and abdominal pain for 1 week. Her medical history included seizures secondary to tuberous sclerosis controlled with lamotrigine and Crohn’s disease in remission for the last 2 years treated with 6-mercaptopurine. On presentation, she was found to have pancytopenia and elevated liver enzymes. Physical examination was signifi cant for ...

BACKGROUND Ongoing HIV-1 replication in lymphoid cells is one explanation of the persistence of HIV-1 reservoirs despite highly active antiretroviral therapy (cART). We tested the potential of cART intensification by Maraviroc plus Raltegravir to decrease proviral HIV-1 DNA levels in lymphoid cells during a randomized trial. PATIENTS AND METHODS We randomly assigned for 48 weeks 22 patients t...

The kinetics of HIV-1 decay under treatment depends on the class of antiretrovirals used. Mathematical models are useful to interpret the different profiles, providing quantitative information about the kinetics of virus replication and the cell populations contributing to viral decay. We modeled proviral integration in short- and long-lived infected cells to compare viral kinetics under treatm...

We recently showed that class I-restricted CD8+ T cells mediate clearance of primary rotavirus infection in mice: JHD knockout (JHD -/-) (B-cell-deficient) mice depleted of CD8+ T cells become chronically infected with murine rotavirus, and beta2 microglobulin knockout (beta2m -/-) mice have delayed but complete clearance of primary rotavirus infection. In the present work we have analyzed the ...

Cytotoxic CD8(+) T cells play a major role in the immune response against viruses. However, the dynamics of CD8(+) T cell responses during the course of a human infection are not well understood. Using tetrameric complexes in combination with a range of intracellular and extracellular markers, we present a detailed analysis of the changes in activation and differentiation undergone by Ag-specif...

Human T lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) causes a range of chronic inflammatory diseases and an aggressive malignancy of T lymphocytes known as adult T-cell leukaemia/lymphoma (ATLL). A cardinal feature of HTLV-1 infection is the presence of expanded clones of HTLV-1-infected T cells, which may persist for decades. A high viral burden (proviral load) is associated with both the inflammatory a...

Numerous neurological disorders are characterized by central nervous system (CNS) vascular permeability. However, the underlying contribution of inflammatory-derived factors leading to pathology associated with blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption remains poorly understood. In order to address this, we developed an inducible model of BBB disruption using a variation of the Theiler's murine ence...

Perforin is a cytotoxic effector molecule expressed in NK cells and a subset of T cells. The mechanisms regulating its expression are incompletely understood. We observed that DNA methylation inhibition could increase perforin expression in T cells, so we examined the methylation pattern and chromatin structure of the human perforin promoter and upstream enhancer in primary CD4(+) and CD8(+) T ...

Objectives: This paper reports for the first time three cases of infection by HTLV-I via organ transplantation; all the organs coming from the same asymptomatic infected donor. The need is considered for the implementation of compulsory screenings for HTLV antibodies on organ donors and on blood banks. Methods: The determination of antibodies for HTLV-I/II on samples of serum and cerebral spina...