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Infection and Immunity, December 2005, p. 7996-8001, Vol. 73, No. 12
0019-9567/05/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/IAI.73.12.7996-8001.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Chronic Leishmania donovani Infection Promotes Bystander CD8⁺-T-Cell Expansion and Heterologous Immunity

Rosalind Polley, Stephanie L. Sanos, Sara Prickett, Ashraful Haque, and Paul M. Kaye^*

Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT, United Kingdom

Received 22 July 2005/ Accepted 22 August 2005

It has been proposed that long-lived memory T cells generated by vaccination or infection reside within a memory compartment that has a finite size. Consequently, in a variety of acute infection models interclonal competition has been shown to lead to attrition of preexisting memory CD8⁺ T cells. Contrary to expectations, therefore, we found that chronic Leishmania donovani infection of Listeria-immune mice results in heightened protection against subsequent Listeria challenge. This protection was associated with bystander expansion of Listeria-specific CD8⁺ T cells and a bias in these cells toward a central memory T-cell phenotype with an enhanced capacity for gamma interferon production. We propose that splenomegaly, which is characteristic of visceral leishmaniasis and other tropical infections, may help promote heterologous immunity by resetting the size of the memory compartment during chronic infection.

Editor: W. A. Petri, Jr.

Present address: Lymphocyte Biology Section, Laboratory of Immunology, NIAID/National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892.

Present address: Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, 540 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016.

Present address: Infection and Immunity, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research, 1G Royal Parade, Parkville, Victoria 3050 Australia.

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Polley, R., Stager, S., Prickett, S., Maroof, A., Zubairi, S., Smith, D. F., Kaye, P. M. (2006). Adoptive Immunotherapy against Experimental Visceral Leishmaniasis with CD8+ T Cells Requires the Presence of Cognate Antigen. Infect. Immun. 74: 773-776 [Abstract] [Full Text]