CD4+ T CELL IMMUNITY IN MOTHER-CHILD PAIRS INFECTED WITH HEPATITIS C VIRUS

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. We hypothesize that the benign liver disease course in children who acquire HCV infection perinatally may be related to improved CD4+T cell responsiveness to HCV antigens in the these children compared to adults. In addition, we will test the hypothesis that a regulatory cytokine, which promotes the cellular immune response, is elevated in the circulation of children compared with their mothers. Since mother-child pairs are genetically similar and infected by the same HCV strain, the mothers serve as an ideal adult comparison group to the children. The research population will be twenty mother-child pairs who both are infected with Hepatitis C and 10 control mother-child pairs who are not infected. The subjects, infected pairs and controls, will be patients and their mothers who are attending clinic visits in the CHRMC Gastroenterology Clinic and who will be having blood work done as part of these visits. The child subjects must be a t least one year of age and weigh more than 7 kg. Historical clinical data will be collected from the mother-child pairs. The blood first draw will be at the time of their clinic visit in the Gastroenterology clinic and the second draw will be scheduled for three months later. The control pairs will have only one blood draw done at the time of the clinic visit. In both infected and control groups, 30 ml of blood will be drawn from the mothers, 10ml from the children.