Abstract
Many intracellular pathogens infect a broad range of host tissues, but the importance of T cells for immunity in these sites is unclear because most of our understanding of antimicrobial T cell responses comes from analyses of lymphoid tissue. Here, we show that in response to viral or bacterial infection, antigen-specific CD8 T cells migrated to nonlymphoid tissues and were present as long-lived memory cells. Strikingly, CD8 memory T cells isolated from nonlymphoid tissues exhibited effector levels of lytic activity directly ex vivo, in contrast to their splenic counterparts. These results point to the existence of a population of extralymphoid effector memory T cells poised for immediate response to infection.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 2413-2417 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Science |
Volume | 291 |
Issue number | 5512 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 23 2001 |