2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Activity of human endogenous retrovirus in Kawasaki disease, leukemia, HTLV-1 infec-tion or chronic fatigue syndrome

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23659525
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Pediatrics
Research Institution	Nagasaki University
Principal Investigator	MORIUCHI HIROYUKI 長崎大学, 医歯(薬)学総合研究科, 教授 (90315234)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2012
Keywords	小児感染症学 / ウイルス学
Research Abstract	We investigated possible involvement of human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) in the etiology of Kawasaki disease (KD) that is hypothesized as a superantigen (SA) disease. While bacterial SAs have been extensively studied, this study has focused on HERV-associated SA, which is inducible upon EB virus (EBV) infection. Expression of Vbeta7 that is induced by HERV-associated SA was comparable between control and KD patients as a whole. However, a subgroup of KD patients was shown to have larger population of Vbeta7-positive T cells, and many of them had EBV viremia. In contrast, EBV viremia was not detected in those with less Vbeta7-positive T cells. Our results suggest that EBV-induced HERV-associated SA may be involved in the etiology of a subgroup of KD patients.