UNBIASED USAGE OF T-CELL RECEPTOR-BETA VARIABLE REGION GENES IN PERIPHERAL-BLOOD CELLS OF HEPATITIS-C PATIENTS - NO CORRELATION WITH SUPERANTIGEN EFFECT
Cc. Wang et al., UNBIASED USAGE OF T-CELL RECEPTOR-BETA VARIABLE REGION GENES IN PERIPHERAL-BLOOD CELLS OF HEPATITIS-C PATIENTS - NO CORRELATION WITH SUPERANTIGEN EFFECT, Journal of medical virology, 45(1), 1995, pp. 24-28
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection frequently causes chronic hepatitis
and tack of virus clearance in these patients. in addition, many patie
nts infected by HCV also present with hypergammaglobulinemia in the ea
rly stage of chronic infection. These observations raise a possible vi
ral superantigen effect induced by HCV, because viral superantigen fou
nd in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or in replication of defectiv
e murine leukemia virus (MuLV) is associated with T-cell dysfunction a
nd polyclonal activation of B cells. The possibility was investigated
of whether HCV encodes any superantigen by analyzing the usage of T-ce
ll receptor (TCR) from the peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) of patie
nts with chronic hepatitis C. Two groups, one with hypergammaglobuline
mia and the other without hypergammaglobulinemia, were studied for the
usage of TCR beta chain by reverse transcription-polymerase chain rea
ction (RT-PCR) analysis. It was found that all genes of VP variable ch
ain were used in the PBL of these patients. Furthermore, there was no
significant difference of the TCR expression pattern between these two
groups, nor a complete deletion of a particular T-cell subset in eith
er group. These results do not provide evidence for HCV superantigen,
but indicate that the TCR usage in the patients was neither defective
nor biased. (C) 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.