Irreversible impact of chronic hepatitis C virus infection on human natural killer cell diversity
Authors:Benedikt Strunz1, Julia Hengst1,2, Heiner Wedemeyer2,3,4 and Niklas K. Björkström1
1 Center for Infectious Medicine, Department of Medicine Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge, 14186 Stockholm, Sweden.
2 Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology, Hannover Medical School, 30625 Hannover, Germany.
3 Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Essen University Hospital, 45147 Essen, Germany.
4 German Center for Infection Research (DZIF); partner site Hannover-Braunschweig, Medical School Hannover, 30625 Hannover and Helmholtz Center for Infection Research, 38124 Braunschweig.
Keywords:
Hepatitis C virus infection, direct-acting antiviral therapy, natural killer cells.
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Please cite this article as:
Benedikt Strunz, Julia Hengst, Heiner Wedemeyer and Niklas K. Björkström (2018). Irreversible impact of chronic hepatitis C virus infection on human natural killer cell diversity. Cell Stress 2(8): 216-218. doi: 10.15698/cst2018.07.150
© 2018 Strunz et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
Diversity is crucial for the immune system to efficiently combat infections. Natural killer (NK) cells are innate cytotoxic lymphocytes that contribute to the control of viral infections. NK cells were for long thought to be a homogeneous population of cells. However, recent work has instead revealed NK cells to represent a highly diverse population of immune cells where a vast number of subpopulations with distinct characteristics exist across tissues. However, the degree to which a chronic viral infection affects NK cell diversity remains elusive. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is effective in establishing chronic infection in humans. During the last years, new direct-acting antiviral drugs (DAA) have revolutionized treatment of chronic hepatitis C, enabling rapid cure in the majority of patients. This allows us to study the influence of a chronic viral infection and its subsequent elimination on the NK cell compartment with a focus on NK cell diversity. In our recent study (Nat Commun, 9:2275), we show that chronic HCV infection irreversibly impacts human NK cell repertoire diversity.