Figure 5.

Consequence of PRRSV infection in the porcine thymus and periphery. (A) Differentiation pathways of αβ and γδ thymocytes in swine (47–51). Shaded subsets are those which are significantly decreased during infection with low pathogenic VR-2332. (B) Flow cytometric comparison of non-infected (control) and PRRSV infected pigs with high-pathogenic strain HuN4 and low-pathogenic strain CD-1a shows that CD4⁺CD8⁺ thymocytes of αβ lineage are depleted after PRRSV infection depending on their pathogenicity (44). Asterisks (^{* and **}) denote significance at the 0.05 and 0.01 levels, respectively. (C) Analysis of peripheral αβ T cells by CDR3 length analysis (52) of T cell repertoire (TCRBV) isolated from peripheral blood (indicated by P) and Broncho alveolar lavage (indicated by L) from piglets infected with the VR-2332 strain is also shown. Analysis done for VβI–VβIII families (I–III), VβIV–VβVI families (IV–VI), and VβVII family (VII) (47). The hole in TCRβ repertoire in PRRSV infected animals is boxed. Lengths of CDR3 are indicated on left and include number of nucleotides (nt) from the 3′end of V segment to the 3′end of J segment (34).