Cellular culprit suspected of pushing dengue fever from bad to worse is cleared by transcripts

(La Jolla Institute for Immunology) No one knows what makes a mild dengue viral infection morph into a severe and sometimes deadly dengue hemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome. Experts previously believed the likely cause was ramped up activity of T cells, which can massively boost an immune response to a virus. Now, researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), have found definitive evidence that CD4 T cells, one of two main subtypes of T cells, are not to blame.