The role of NKT cells in the mouse model of hepatitis B virus infection
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Chen, Pin-Hsuan
Abstract
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a common infection, which can lead to both acute and chronic liver diseases. HBV infection is a major global health problem and chronic viral infection will lead to chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. However, although the adaptive immunity is essential for viral clearance and controlling HBV infection, the early innate immunity is hard to demonstrate and the innate immune cells involved in HBV clearance are still poorly defined. Recently, results from animal and human studies suggest early response of natural killer T cells (NKT cells) is involved in HBV infection. However, the role of NKT cells in HBV clearance is still not clear. For further exploration of the role of NKT ells in HBV infection, in this study, we use CD1d-/- mice —which are deficient of CD1d-restricted NKT cells— to study the role of NKT cells against HBV in a mouse animal model with hydrodynamic injection approach. Our results demonstrated that in the CD1d-/- mice, there was a higher HBV-positive rate with prolonged HBV persistence. In addition, the CD1d knockout mice were not able to develop protective antibody compared to wild type C57BL/6 mice. Furthermore, there was increased exhausted phenotype of CD8+ T cells in liver infiltrating lymphocytes at late phase of HBV transfection, which demonstrated the immune dysfunction of T cells and lead to impairment of capacity in HBV viral clearance. Thus, our study suggests that NKT cells are involved in the clearance of HBV and may play a role in the development of sufficient adaptive immune responses to HBV infection.
Subjects
hepatitis B virus
NKT cells
SDGs
Type
thesis
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