Hepatitis e rORF2p stimulated and unstimulated peripheral expression profiling in patients with self-limiting hepatitis e infection

To improve the current knowledge on the involvement of peripheral lymphocytes in hepatitis e virus (hev) associated pathogenesis,we analyzed alterations in (1) immunophenotypic expressions (by flow cytometry) and (2) gene expression patterns (by taqman low density array) of activatory,inhibitory,integrin,homing,ectonucleotidase machinery,costimulatory,inflammatory markers,and t regulatory cells (treg) associated cytokines on hev rorf2p stimulated and unstimulated pbmcs of 43 acute hev patients,30 recovered individuals,and 43 controls. the phenotypic expressions of key molecules ctla-4,gitr,cd103,cd25,cd69,il10 and tgf-β 1 in the acute patients and tgf-β 1 in the recovered individuals were significantly elevated on both unstimulated and stimulated pbmcs. gene expression array data revealed upregulations of cd25,pd1,cd103,ccr4,il10,and tgf-β 1 on both unstimulated and hev rorf2p stimulated pbmcs of acute patients. the observed upregulations of inhibitory,integrin,activatory,and treg-associated cytokine genes on the pbmcs of acute hev patients complemented by their frequency data suggest them as the major players in the fine-tuning of immune response in self-limiting hepatitis e infection. © 2014 sanjay b. rathod and anuradha s. tripathy.