Severity of Infectious Mononucleosis (IM) Correlates with the Frequency of Crossreactive Influenza A Virus (IAV)-M1 and Epstein Barr Virus (EBV)-BMLF-1-specific CD8 T Cells
During EBV-associated IM IAV-specific crossreactive memory T cells are activated and play a role in disease severity. In HLA-A2+ IM patients, influenza M158 (IAV-M1)-specific CD8 memory T cell responses crossreacted with two different EBV lytic epitopes, BMLF1280 (17/29) and BRLF1190 (19/20). Furthermore, 11/22 IM patients demonstrated some intra-viral crossreactivity between EBV-BRLF1 and -BMLF1 responses. Disease severity of IM directly correlated with significantly increased frequencies of crossreactive IAV-M1/EBV-BMLF1, IAV-M1, and EBV-BMLF1 specific CD8 cells, and with mean viral load over the first 5 weeks of infection. Disease severity did not correlate with BRLF1 or M1/BRLF1 crossreactive responses. When severity of IM was scored and patients were assigned to either mild or severe groups, disease severity correlated with specific TCR Vb usage in IAV-M1 population suggesting that TcR selection is driving disease outcome. Consistent with IAV-M1 and EBV-BMLF1 responses driving increased immunopathology was the observation that patients with severe disease had significantly more IAV-M1 and EBV-BMLF1 cells producing IFNg/MIP1-b in response to antigen as compared to patients with mild disease. These results suggest that T cell crossreactivity impacts T cell selection and function and ultimately disease outcome. Insights on these issues are important for the intelligent design of vaccines and to develop therapeutic interventions for virally induced disease (NIHAI49320)
