Rabies virus infects mouse and human lymphocytes and induces apoptosis

Abstract

Attenuated and highly neurovirulent rabies virus strains have distinct cellular tropisms. Highly neurovirulent strains such as the challenge virus standard (CVS) are highly neurotropic, whereas the attenuated strain ERA also infects nonneuronal cells. We report that both rabies virus strains infect activated murine lymphocytes and the human lymphoblastoid Jurkat T-cell line in vitro. The lymphocytes are more permissive to the attenuated ERA rabies virus strain than to the CVS strain in both cases. We also report that in contrast to that of the CVS strain, ERA viral replication induces apoptosis of infected Jurkat T cells, and cell death is concomitant with viral glycoprotein expression, suggesting that this protein has a role in the induction of apoptosis. Our data indicate that (i) rabies virus infects lymphocytes, (ii) lymphocyte infection with the attenuated rabies virus strain causes apoptosis, and (iii) apoptosis does not hinder rabies virus production. In contrast to CVS, ERA rabies virus and other attenuated rabies virus vaccines stimulate a strong immune response and are efficient live vaccines. The paradoxical finding that a rabies virus triggers a strong immune response despite the fact that it infects lymphocytes and induces apoptosis is discussed in terms of the function of apoptosis in the immune response.

Detection of apoptosis induced by new type gosling viral enteritis virus in vitro through fluorescein annexin V-FITC/PI double labeling

“…Modulation of apoptosis is a common feature of infection by animal viruses and it also contributes to the pathogenesis process [36] . A variety of animal viruses have been identified to induce apoptosis in cultured cells [12,[14][15][16] , which contained adenovirus. Early in 1968, Takemori [37] found that cyt mutants of human adenovirus could provoke more violent CPEs.…”

“…Apoptosis is recognized as an important process in different biological systems, including embryonic development, cell turnover, and immune response against tumorigenic or virusinfected cells [6][7][8] . An increasing number of viruses or viral gene products were reported to induce apoptosis both in vitro and in vivo [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] .…”

Enterovirus 71 infection induces Fas ligand expression and apoptosis of Jurkat cells

“…This leads to recruitment and activation of a cascade of proteases and, finally, cell death. Several different viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), rabies, and hepatitis C virus (HCV), induce the apoptosis of immune cells to dampen or skew the immune response [Thoulouze et al, 1997]. This study was to determine whether during viremia, EV71 infects T cells and induces cell death to evade an immune attack.…”

Screening of Pro‐Apoptotic Genes Upregulated in an Experimental Street Rabies Virus‐Infected Neonatal Mouse Brain

“…Rabies virus, a member of an enveloped RNA virus of the family Rhabdoviridae, that causes a dreadful ancient disease, hydrophobia, is one of the known viruses that can readily induce programmed cell death. The induction of apoptosis by RABV is shown to be dependent on the strain of the virus, the route of inoculation and the type of host cell (30,33,35). RABV-induced apoptosis is mainly found in a particular experimental condition.…”