Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Efficiently Infects Human Primary T Lymphocytes and Activates the Extrinsic and Intrinsic Apoptosis Pathways

作者：Hin Chu, Jie Zhou, Bosco Ho‐Yin Wong, Cun Li, Jasper Fuk‐Woo Chan, Zhongshan Cheng, Dong Wook Yang, Dong Wang, Andrew Chak-Yiu Lee, Chuangen Li, Man Lung Yeung, Jian‐Piao Cai, Ivy Hau-Yee Chan, Wai‐Kuen Ho, Kelvin Kai‐Wang To, Bo‐Jian Zheng, Yanfeng Yao, Chuan Qin, Kwok‐Yung Yuen · 发表于：The Journal of Infectious Diseases · 年份：2015 · DOI：10.1093/infdis/jiv380 · 被引用次数：474 · 研究领域：SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research、COVID-19 Clinical Research Studies、Immunotherapy and Immune Responses

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is associated with a mortality rate of >35%. We previously showed that MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) could infect human macrophages and dendritic cells and induce cytokine dysregulation. Here, we further investigated the interplay between human primary T cells and MERS-CoV in disease pathogenesis. Importantly, our results suggested that MERS-CoV efficiently infected T cells from the peripheral blood and from human lymphoid organs, including the spleen and the tonsil. We further demonstrated that MERS-CoV infection induced apoptosis in T cells, which involved the activation of both the extrinsic and intrinsic apoptosis pathways. Remarkably, immunostaining of spleen sections from MERS-CoV-infected common marmosets demonstrated the presence of viral nucleoprotein in their CD3(+) T cells. Overall, our results suggested that the unusual capacity of MERS-CoV to infect T cells and induce apoptosis might partly contribute to the high pathogenicity of the virus.