Type B coxsackieviruses and their interactions with the innate and adaptive immune systems

Abstract

Coxsackieviruses are important human pathogens, and their interactions with the innate and adaptive immune systems are of particular interest. Many viruses evade some aspects of the innate response, but coxsackieviruses go a step further by actively inducing, and then exploiting, some features of the host cell response. Furthermore, while most viruses encode proteins that hinder the effector functions of adaptive immunity, coxsackieviruses and their cousins demonstrate a unique capacity to almost completely evade the attention of naive CD8+ T cells. In this article, we discuss the above phenomena, describe the current status of research in the field, and present several testable hypotheses regarding possible links between virus infection, innate immune sensing and disease.