What are the differences between acute and persistent viral infections? How can certain viruses stay with us forever and never be cleared? This and much more in this episode of The Viral Talk.
Key takeaways:
- An acute infection is characterized by a sudden or rapid development of disease, that can either be resolved quickly or lead to death;
- In a persistent infection, the virus is not cleared by our body, and it either becomes latent (e.g Herpes Simplex Virus) or it keeps replicating at low levels for very long periods of time (e.g. Hepatitis B Virus, HIV);
- For a latent infection to become a persistent infection,
it needs two characteristics: persistence and reversibility. - Reversibility is the ability of a virus to resume
active viral replication after undergoing latency, persistence is the ability
to stay in our body without being eliminated/cleared for a long period of time. - A latent virus that lacks a way to be ‘re-activated’
only causes dead-end infections. - Herpesviruses and Retroviruses are the only known
viral families able to undergo latency. - Latency is a successful survival strategy that allows
viruses to avoid being cleared by the host’s defences. - In addition to latent viral infections, there is
another type of infection which is chronic viral infections. - In chronic infections, the virus keeps replicating
inside the host for long periods of time without being cleared, causing low levels of pathology. The best example for this is HIV, followed by Hepatitis B virus.
- Constant rounds of infection by these viruses lead to
the onset of the diseases they’re known for, AIDS and hepatitis, respectively.
Articles for the most interested:
General definition of persistent viral infections - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK8538/
Common threads in persistent viral infections - https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01905-09
Retroviruses in the human genome - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2018.02039/full
How do viruses go latent? - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2914632/#:~:text=In%20latent%20infection%2C%20the%20full,additional%20properties%3A%20persistence%20and%20reversibility.
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