ArticleNature medicine2013
Loss of immune escape mutations during persistent HCV infection in pregnancy enhances replication of vertically transmitted viruses.
Article in Nature medicine, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- CD4+ T cell restoration and control of hepatitis C virus replication after childbirth.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2020Trial
- Yellow Fever in Pregnancy: A Comprehensive Review of the Clinical Implications and Vaccination in the Context of the 2024-2026 Americas Outbreak.Tropical medicine and infectious disease · 2026Review
- Virtual screening, optimization design, and synthesis analysis of novel benzofuran derivatives as pan-genotypic HCV NS5B polymerase inhibitors using molecular modeling.BMC chemistry · 2025Article
- Direct-Acting Antiviral Agents in Prevention of Maternal-Fetal Transmission of Hepatitis C Virus in Pregnancy.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Direct-acting antiviral resistance of Hepatitis C virus is promoted by epistasis.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Viral hepatitis in pregnancy.Journal of viral hepatitis · 2022Review
- Adenovirus-vectored T cell vaccine for hepacivirus shows reduced effectiveness against a CD8 T cell escape variant in rats.PLoS pathogens · 2021Article
- T-Cell Immunity against the Hepatitis C Virus: A Persistent Research Priority in an Era of Highly Effective Therapy.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine · 2021Review
- Role of Inflammation in Virus Pathogenesis during Pregnancy.Journal of virology · 2020Review
- Adaptive Immune Response against Hepatitis C Virus.International journal of molecular sciences · 2020Review
- CD4+ T cell responses in human viral infection: lessons from hepatitis C.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2020Article
- Testing for Hepatitis C in Pregnancy: the Time has Come for Routine Rather than Risk-based.Current hepatology reports · 2019Article
- Review
- Vertical Transmission of Hepatitis C Virus: Variable Transmission Bottleneck and Evidence of MidgestationJournal of virology · 2017Article
- Spontaneous Viral Load Decline and Subsequent Clearance of Chronic Hepatitis C Virus in Postpartum Women Correlates With Favorable Interleukin-28B Gene Allele.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2017Article
- Short-Sighted Virus Evolution and a Germline Hypothesis for Chronic Viral Infections.Trends in microbiology · 2017Review
- Quasispecies of Hepatitis C Virus Participate in Cell-Specific Infectivity.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Tracking HCV protease population diversity during transmission and susceptibility of founder populations to antiviral therapy.Antiviral research · 2017Article
- Identification of the core regulators of the HLA I-peptide binding process.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Innate and Adaptive Immune Responses in Chronic HCV Infection.Current drug targets · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Globally, about 1% of pregnant women are persistently infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Mother-to-child transmission of HCV occurs in 3-5% of pregnancies and accounts for most new childhood infections. HCV-specific CD8(+) cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) are vital in the clearance of acute HCV infections, but in the 60-80% of infections that persist, these cells become functionally exhausted or select for mutant viruses that escape T cell recognition. Increased HCV replication during pregnancy suggests that maternofetal immune tolerance mechanisms may further impair HCV-specific CTLs, limiting their selective pressure on persistent viruses. To assess this possibility, we characterized circulating viral quasispecies during and after consecutive pregnancies in two women. This revealed a loss of some escape mutations in HLA class I epitopes during pregnancy that was associated with emergence of more fit viruses. CTL selective pressure was reimposed after childbirth, at which point escape mutations in these epitopes again predominated in the quasispecies and viral load dropped sharply. Importantly, the viruses transmitted perinatally were those with enhanced fitness due to reversion of escape mutations. Our findings indicate that the immunoregulatory changes of pregnancy reduce CTL selective pressure on HCV class I epitopes, thereby facilitating vertical transmission of viruses with optimized replicative fitness.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.