Document Type

Article

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

1.6 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 3. MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES, Immunology

Publication Details

PLoS ONE

Volume 13, Issue 9, September 2018, Article number e0203521

Abstract

It is well accepted that influenza A virus predisposes individuals to often more severe super-infections with Streptococcus pneumonia. However, the mechanisms that lead to this synergy are not clearly understood. Recent data suggests that competent Th17 immunity is crucial to clearance and protection from invasive pneumococcal disease of the lung. We demonstrate that early influenza infection significantly reduced levels of pneumococcus driven IL-12p70, IL-23 and IL-27 in human monocytes with significant impairment of IL-17A and IFN-γ in HKSP-treated allogeneic mixed lymphocyte cultures. We also provide evidence to suggest that the hemagglutinin component of the virus is at least partially responsible for this downward pressure on IL-17 responses but surprisingly this suppression occurs despite robust IL-23 levels in hemagglutinin-treated monocyte cultures. This study demonstrates that influenza can directly affect the immunological pathways that promote appropriate responses to Streptococcus pneumonia in human immune cells. © 2018 Loughran et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203521


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