DNA methylation regulates the neonatal CD4⁺ T-cell response to pneumonia in mice.

ABSTRACT: Pediatric acute lung injury, usually because of pneumonia, has a mortality rate of more than 20% and an incidence that rivals that of all childhood cancers combined. CD4⁺ T-cells coordinate the immune response to pneumonia but fail to function robustly among the very young, who have poor outcomes from lung infection. We hypothesized that DNA methylation represses a mature CD4⁺ T-cell transcriptional program in neonates with pneumonia. Here, we found that neonatal mice (3-4 days old) aspirated with Escherichia coli bacteria had a higher mortality rate than juvenile mice (11-14 days old). Transcriptional profiling with an unsupervised RNA-Seq approach revealed that neonates displayed an attenuated lung CD4⁺ T-cell transcriptional response to pneumonia

SUBMITTER: McGrath-Morrow SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6066312 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature