Chapter category: Viruses
Chemokine Expression and Granulocyte Recruitment in Response to Acute Pneumovirus Infection in vivo
Chapter authors:
Helene F. Rosenberg and Joseph B. Domachowske
The use of appropriate infectious agents in mice to mimic viral infection in
man is essential to the understanding of human disease. In this Chapter, we
focus on our
recent findings on the inflammatory responses to respiratory virus infection
using a novel model to study diseases caused by pneumoviruses. The group of
pathogens collectively known as pneumoviruses are members of the family Paramyxoviridae,
subfamily pneumovirinae (see Chapter 6). Briefly, they are enveloped
viruses with negative sense, non-segmented single-stranded RNA genomes, each
encoding ~10-12 open reading frames.1 The best characterized of this
group is respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a human pneumovirus pathogen that
is a common cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia in pediatric populations and
among the institutionalized elderly2,3 (also described in Chapters
6 and 7). Despite advances in prophylaxis,4,5 there are no specific
therapies available to treat this infection. The limited efficacy of anti-viral
approaches, such as ribavirin6 together with the similar limited
effectiveness of systemic anti-inflammatory therapies7,8 suggest
that RSV-mediated respiratory disease may include independent virus-mediated
and proinflammatory pathophysiologic components.
