IMMUNE RESPONSE OF GAMMA/DELTA T CELL TO MYCOBACTERIUM IN

摘要

Infection with the tuberculosis (TB) bacterium is the leading cause of death from a single infectious organism in human. The tension of TB has been intensified by the emergence of multidrug-resistant organisms, its association with AIDS and drug users. Our surveillance and other's data (1) showed that pigs have high prevalence of Mycobacterium infection, especially M. avium. The types of M. avium frequently isolated from pigs in slaughterhouses have been reported being identical to those from human AIDS patients (2). Recently, gamma/delta (gd) T cells have drawn a great deal of attention from researchers, because of their protective immunity to intracellular pathogens (3), particularly Mycobacterium species. Gamma/delta T cells have intriguing features including high frequency to mycobacterial antigens without expansion and early responses to mycobacterial infection. It has been found that pigs have a high number of gd T cells in blood compared with other species such as human or mice. The purposeof this study was to examine gd T cell immune responses to mycobacterial infection in pigs.