"Persistent Hepatitis C Virus Infection in a Chimpanzee Is Associated with Emergence of a Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte Escape Variant."

According to the authors' abstract of an article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, "Hepatitis C virus (HCV) establishes a persistent infection in humans and chimpanzees despite the presence of virus-specific, class I major histocompatibility complex-restricted CD8⁺ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in the liver. The data presented here demonstrate that CTLs directed against a conserved epitope in the HCV nonstructural 3 protein persist in the liver of a chronically infected chimpanzee for at least 2 years after infection. However, these CTLs did not recognize the HCV quasi-species present in the plasma of this animal at...

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