title: Hantavirus immunology of rodent reservoirs: current status and future directions.
abstract: Hantaviruses are hosted by rodents, insectivores and bats. Several rodent-borne hantaviruses cause two diseases that share many features in humans, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome in Eurasia or hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome in the Americas. It is thought that the immune response plays a significant contributory role in these diseases. However, in reservoir hosts that have been closely examined, little or no pathology occurs and infection is persistent despite evidence of adaptive immune responses. Because most hantavirus reservoirs are not model organisms, it is difficult to conduct meaningful experiments that might shed light on how the viruses evade sterilizing immune responses and why immunopathology does not occur. Despite these limitations, recent advances in instrumentation and bioinformatics will have a dramatic impact on understanding reservoir host responses to hantaviruses by employing a systems biology approach to identify important pathways that mediate virus/reservoir relationships.
authors.affiliation: Arthropod-borne and Infectious Diseases Laboratory, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80524, USA. tony.schountz@colostate.edu.
authors.forename: Tony
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Schountz
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Virology, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, Hamilton, MT 59840, USA. prescottjb@niaid.nih.gov.
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Prescott
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D058070:Asymptomatic Diseases; D002353:Carrier State / Q000276:immunology / Q000662:veterinary / Q000821:virology; D004197:Disease Reservoirs; D006476:Orthohantavirus / Q000276:immunology*; D018778:Hantavirus Infections / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology / Q000662:veterinary* / Q000821:virology; D054884:Host-Pathogen Interactions; D012377:Rodentia / Q000276:immunology*