Prospective study of viral clearance and CD4+ T-cell response in acute hepatitis C primary infection and reinfection

Viral clearance or persistence after acute hepatitis C infection: Interim results from a prospective study

“…Data obtained in this study support a number of reports indicating that most subjects who eventually recover do so within the first 3 to 4 months of infection (2,13,19,21). According to our results, patients with self-limited illness cleared the virus during the first two weeks from the enrollment to the study or approximately within one month following clinical presentation.…”

“…The ALT profile during acute phase of HCV infection can be highly variable (4,13,19) and has been shown to be associated with different outcome of hepatitis C (17). A monophasic ALT profile has been reported to predict recovery, while polyphasic ALT profile is often followed by chronic evolution.…”

“…Cellular immune responses are thought to play an important role in the immunopathogenesis of HCV infection (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13). Viral clearance is associated with vigorous and permanently maintained T cell responses that target multiple HCV epitopes during acute infection.…”

Natural clearance of hepatitis C virus in hemophilia patients

“…The outcome of HCV infection is determined by complex host-virus interactions (9) and based on studies involving hemophilia patients; it seems that genetic factors have rather modest influence on the outcome of hepatitis C (7). Nevertheless, immune system, including human leukocyte antigen (HLA) complex, plays an important role in natural clearance of HCV (10) and is worth examining in different populations.…”

Enhanced and Sustained CD8+ T Cell Responses with an Adenoviral Vector-Based Hepatitis C Virus Vaccine Encoding NS3 Linked to the MHC Class II Chaperone Protein Invariant Chain

“…The factors of importance for spontaneous clearance of HCV are not fully understood, but studies of HCV-infected patients and experimentally infected chimpanzees, the only other species susceptible to HCV infection, suggest that vigorous, multispecific and sustained memory T cell responses have an important role (4). Strong, functional, and multispecific CD4 + T cell responses and a broad cytotoxic CD8 + T cell response against the nonstructural (NS) proteins of HCV are associated with self-limited HCV infection (5)(6)(7)(8)(9). In addition, the importance of both CD4 + and CD8 + memory T cells for protection against persistent HCV infection has been demonstrated by depletion studies performed in experimentally infected chimpanzees (10,11).…”