Human Acquired Immunity to Rotavirus Disease and Correlates of Protection

This chapter reviews recent studies from this group on adaptive immune responses to rotavirus (RV) and correlates of protection against disease. The main findings are that both circulating memory RV-specific B and T cells preferentially express intestinal homing receptors, and that both types of lymphocyte populations are enriched in cells with peculiar functions: while B cells are enriched in an innate immunity subset, T cells have a poor functional profile. These characteristics are probably due to the fact that these lymphocytes are activated and proliferate in a tolerogenic intestinal microenvironment (the predominant site of RV replication), making RV infection an excellent model to study lymphocytes from the gut-associated lymphoid tissue. This knowledge may also be useful to define better correlates of protection against the disease.