Mechanisms of immune modulation by Varicella zoster virus during cutaneous infections

水痘带状疱疹病毒（VZV）是一种疱疹病毒，可感染高达90%的人口。VZV引起两种皮肤病：主要发生在儿童的水痘（水痘）和中老年人群的带状疱疹（带状疱疹）。虽然VZV通常在健康人中引起相对轻微的疾病，但在儿童和成人中仍然引起显著的发病率。VZV在免疫功能低下的个体（如老年人或患有艾滋病毒的患者）中引起危及生命的疾病。带状疱疹影响许多老年人，主要并发症是长期剧烈疼痛或带状疱疹后神经痛（PHN），这可能严重削弱，通常需要在初次发作后数月甚至数年的随访医疗护理。尽管它对社区产生重大影响，但人们对这种病毒的功能和致病机制知之甚少。该项目旨在提高我们对VZV感染皮肤如何影响特殊皮肤细胞功能的理解，以便为开发旨在减轻VZV疾病对社区影响的疗法提供新信息。该项目有三个主要组成部分：(1)确定水痘和带状疱疹患者感染皮肤中存在的免疫细胞类型的差异。(2)评估VZV感染对特化免疫细胞（称为树突状细胞）正常功能的影响(3)确定病毒的哪些部分（称为基因）编码干扰特化免疫细胞（树突状细胞）正常功能的功能

Varicella zoster virus (VZV) is a herpesvirus which infects up to 90% of the population. VZV causes two skin diseases: chicken pox (varicella) predominantly in childhood and shingles (herpes zoster) in middle to old age people. Whilst VZV usually causes relatively mild disease in healthy individuals, VZV still causes significant morbidity in children and adults. VZV causes life-threatening disease in immunocompromised individuals such as patients who are elderly or have HIV disease. Shingles affects many elderly individuals and a major complication is prolonged severe pain or post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN), which can be severely debilitating and often requires follow-up medical care for months or even years after the initial attack. Despite its significant impact on the community, little is known about how this virus functions and causes disease. This project aims to improve our understanding of how VZV infection of the skin affects the function of specialised skin cells in order to provide novel information for the development of therapies aimed at lessening the impact of VZV disease on the community. This project has three main components: (1) To determine what the differences are in the types of immune cells present in infected skin from chicken pox and shingles sufferers. (2) To assess the impact of VZV infection on the ability of specialised immune cells (called dendritic cells) to function properly (3) To identify which parts of the virus (called genes) code for functions that interfere with the proper function of specialised immune cells (dendritic cells)