title: Can Langerhans cell UV injury and dendritic cell infection by immunosuppressive viruses induce immunologic tolerance? First part.
abstract: Though it has not been described by the HIV1-AIDS consensual thinkers, we propose the thesis according to which some immunocyte populations or their interactions can achieve tolerance or split immunologic tolerance in patients suffering from this disease. The proposed concept is based on data registered: 1) after Langerhans cell local injury by UV irradiation in their physiologic localisations, the skin and mucosae: and 2) after systemic infections of dendritic cells by immunosuppressive viruses, including some animal retroviruses, measles, lymphocytic choriomeningitis viruses, and HIV1. We can describe both types or manifestations concerning local UV injury and systemic viral infection combined in an AIDS patient, who received a PUVA irradiation before and at the beginning of his virostatic treatment, which he has now successfully received for eight years. The conditions of this patient differ from those of non-UV victim patients of the cohort to which he belongs, for two reasons: 1) the numbers of both his CD4+ and his suppressor T cells have been reduced to near 0 after UV irradiation; and b) his viral load, which has been exponentially reduced, has not reached, after eight years, the asymptotic part of the VL curve, characterized by PCR non-assessable viral load, which the non-UV victims of the cohort have reached. We wonder if, in this patient, there do not coexist two sorts of immunologic phenomena: 1) one bound to CTL, the numbers of which are increased, whose cytotoxicity is added to the virostatic action; and 2) one bound to the virus attack restriction by an immunologic tolerance. Contrary to the cohort controls, in whom an allogenic skin graft was only accepted for 20 days, the graft of the same donor has been tolerated in the UV victim patient for 70 days. This patient will be discussed in the second part of this editorial: the first part is devoted to the description of several conditions in which Langerhans cell injury by UV, or dendritic cell infections by measles, lymphocytic choriomeningitis viruses or animal retroviruses are followed, not only by immunodepression manifestations, but by immunologic tolerance.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mathé
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003713:Dendritic Cells / Q000502:physiology / Q000821:virology*; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007108:Immune Tolerance; D007801:Langerhans Cells / Q000502:physiology / Q000528:radiation effects*; D008217:Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus / Q000502:physiology*; D008459:Measles virus / Q000502:physiology*; D014466:Ultraviolet Rays