HHV-6 University

http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/abs/10.2217/fvl.13.7 Lorenzo Dagna Joshua C Pritchett & Paolo Lusso Future Virology Vol. 8, No. 3, Pages 273-287 , DOI 10.2217/fvl.13.7 (doi:10.2217/fvl.13.7)    "Like other members of the Herpesviridae family, human herpesvirus (HHV)-6A and HHV-6B have developed a wide variety of strategies to modulate or suppress host immune responses and, thereby, facilitate their own spread and persistence in vivo . Long considered two variants of the same virus, HHV-6A and HHV-6B have recently been reclassified as distinct viral species, although the established nomenclature has been maintained. In this review, we summarize the distinctive profiles of interaction of these two viruses with the human immune system. Both HHV-6A and HHV-6B display a tropism for CD4 + T lymphocytes, but they can also infect, in a productive or nonproductive fashion, other cells of the immune system. However, there are...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12857897 Abstract Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) is a potentially immunosuppressive agent that has been suggested to act as a cofactor in the progression of human immunodeficiency virus disease. However, the lack of suitable experimental models has hampered the elucidation of the mechanisms of HHV-6-mediated immune suppression. Here, we used ex vivo lymphoid tissue to investigate the cellular tropism and pathogenic mechanisms of HHV-6. Viral strains belonging to both HHV-6 subgroups (A and B) were able to productively infect human tonsil tissue fragments in the absence of exogenous stimulation. The majority of viral antigen-expressing cells were CD4(+) T lymphocytes expressing a nonnaive phenotype, while CD8(+) T cells were efficiently infected only with HHV-6A. Accordingly, HHV-6A infection resulted in the depletion of both CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells, whereas in HHV-6B-infected tissue CD4(+) T cells were predominantly depleted. The ex...