Chronic viral infections display a major health burden worldwide. Immune control of chronic viral infections requires a balanced interplay between immune activation promoting virus clearance and deactivation of antiviral immunity to prevent tissue damage. Our research is focused on identifying mechanisms regulating the balanced immune control of viral infections. Innate type I interferon produc...

background and aims: human t-lymphotropic virus (htlv) is a human retrovirus which has been known to cause adult t-cell leukemia/lymphoma and some other inflammatory disorders. patients with hereditary bleeding diseases are at high risk for these viruses. in this study, we evaluated serological htlv-i/ii infection among these patients in west azerbaijan of iran. material and methods: we studied...

Initial studies suggested that major histocompatibility complex class I-restricted viral epitopes could be predicted by the presence of particular residues termed anchors. However, recent studies showed that nonanchor positions of the epitopes are also significant for class I binding and recognition by cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). We investigated if changing nonanchor amino acids could incre...

Human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) causes chronic infection for which there is no cure or neutralising vaccine. HTLV-I has been clinically linked to the development of adult T-cell leukaemia/lymphoma (ATL), an aggressive blood cancer, and HAM/TSP, a progressive neurological and inflammatory disease. Infected individuals typically mount a large, persistently activated CD8(+) cytotoxic T-...

    Human T lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) is a retrovirus which is associated with adult T cells leukaemia (ATL) and HTLV-I-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) in a minority of HTLV-I-infected individuals. It is not clear why a minority of HTLV-I-infected individuals develop HAM/TSP and majority remains lifelong carriers. It seems that the interaction between the v...

The hepatitis B virus pX protein is a potent transcriptional activator of viral and cellular genes whose mechanism of action is poorly understood. Here we show that pX dramatically stimulates in vitro DNA binding of a variety of cellular proteins that contain basic region/leucine zipper (bZIP) DNA binding domains. The basis for increased DNA binding is a direct interaction between pX and the co...

Although it is widely believed that viral clearance is mediated principally by the destruction of infected cells by cytotoxic T cells, noncytolytic antiviral activity of CD81 T cells may play a role in preventing the progression to disease in infections with immunodeficiency viruses and hepatitis B virus. We demonstrate here that (1) replication of human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) is ...

Although it is widely believed that viral clearance is mediated principally by the destruction of infected cells by cytotoxic T cells, noncytolytic antiviral activity of CD8(+) T cells may play a role in preventing the progression to disease in infections with immunodeficiency viruses and hepatitis B virus. We demonstrate here that (1) replication of human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) i...