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Dysfunctional immunity is associated with dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome. Structural analyses reveal that a key germline-encoded contact between the T cell antigen receptor and a peptide underpins the immunodominance of dengue-virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses of weak affinity.
The differentiation of follicular regulatory T cells can be limited by the cytokine IL-2, preventing the emergence of autoantibodies. This research identifies these cells as key regulators of the germinal center response.
The US National Institutes of Health convened a workshop on disease-promoting chronic inflammation to identify the challenges and needs in the development of clinically feasible strategies for monitoring a person's inflammation status before, during and after disease occurrence.
Recent decades have seen an alarming rise in the incidence of autoimmune disease. In a Perspective, Matarese and colleagues discuss the evidence showing that changes in diet and metabolic workload can account for, at least in part, rises in the frequency of autoimmune disease.
Gillet and colleagues find that infection with a gammaherpesvirus confers strong and lasting protection against airway allergy through the replacement of lung-resident alveolar macrophages with recruited regulatory monocytes of bone marrow origin.
Type 1 diabetes has a multifactorial etiology. Lehuen and colleagues demonstrate that MAIT cells serve both positive roles and negative roles in type 1 diabetes by maintaining gut integrity and limiting pancreatic inflammation but also directly destroying β-cells.
NLR proteins contribute to antiviral immune responses. Lemon and colleagues show that NLRX1 promotes antiviral responses in hepatocytes by competing with the kinase PKR for viral double-stranded RNA, which allows accumulation of the transcription factor IRF1 for early control of viral replication.
T cells developing in the thymus are signaled during positive selection to differentiate into either CD4+ T cells or CD8+ T cells. Singer and colleagues show that CD8+-lineage specification is signaled exclusively by cytokines, including cytokines that do not signal via the γc receptor, and that these are the only signals in the thymus that upregulate the transcription factor Runx3d to direct specification to the CD8+ lineage.