During a recent Ebola outbreak, researchers attempted extractingantibodies from people who had been infected but survived. Theythen injected other people with these antibodies to help themovercome the illness.  Even more recently, anexperimental vaccine against Ebola has been approved for emergencyuse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ebola is a virus thatinfects macrophages and dendritic cells. In doing so, it causesdysregulation in several ways. For example,
1) it prevents infected cells from secreting interferons,
2) it causes infected cells to secrete massive amounts ofpro-inflammatory signals,
3) it allows infected cells to present antigen to Th cells, butcauses the infected cells to encourage the Th cells to commitapoptosis.
4) Causes NK cells to commit apoptosis.
5) Finally, Ebola also causes endothelia to NOT express surfaceadhesion proteins (ex, selectins).
Explain the roles of interferons and of NK cells infighting viruses.
