Immunopathological reactions in viral infections of the central nervous system

Viral infections of the central nervous system (CNS), as of any other organ, evoke humoral and cellular immune responses which enable the host to eliminate the pathogen. However, effective responses may themselves produce tissue damage sometimes exceeding that caused by the virus itself. The relative contribution of the various immunopathological mechanisms in human viral encephalitides remains mostly ill defined. Most of our understanding of the immunopathogenesis in viral CNS infections comes from studies on experimentally infected animals. The prototype model of a virus-induced, cell-mediated, immunopathological CNS disease is the neurological illness of mice that follows intracerebral inoculation with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus. Virus-specific cytotoxic T cells are crucial to the pathogenesis but death of the animals only results when these cells are targeted into functionally essential brain structures like the circumventricular organs or the medulla oblongata and cervical spinal cord.