UNBIASED USAGE OF T-CELL RECEPTOR-BETA VARIABLE REGION GENES IN PERIPHERAL-BLOOD CELLS OF HEPATITIS-C PATIENTS - NO CORRELATION WITH SUPERANTIGEN EFFECT

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.