Table 3.

EBV proteins involved in immune system evasion and autoimmunity induction.

Protein	Mechanism	References
Viral IL-10 homologue	It inhibits IFN-γ production, CD8+ cytotoxic T-cells and MHC-I expression	[62]
EA/R	It is a viral Bcl-2 homologue which confers resistance to apoptosis	[64]
LMP-1 and LMP-2A	They rescue infected B cells from apoptosis and are involved in molecular mimicry. LMP-1 triggers IFN-α production by pDCs through TLRs and mediates PDL-1 overexpression in neutrophils. LMP-1 renal expression is increased in LN and correlates with severity.	[17,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73]
EBNA-1	It can induce autoimmunity through molecular mimicry with C1q	[74,75]
EBNA-2	It is a TF which controls all other latent viral genes. 50% of SLE-predisposing loci can be occupied by EBNA-2, suggesting a key role in AIDs	[76]