Functional Avidity: A Measure to Predict the Efficacy of Effector T Cells?

Figure 2

Proposed Model of the relationships between antigen exposure and functional avidity of T cells. Functional avidity of virus-specific CD8 T cells during (a) acute infection and then translation after transition to the chronic phase for (b) uncontrolled virus infection (such as progressive HIV infection) or (c) controlled but persistent virus infection (such as nonprogressive HIV, cytomegalovirus [CMV], or Epstein-Barr virus [EBV], or (d) after virus clearance (such as influenza [Flu] or adenovirus [Ad5], or early treatment of acute HIV infection). (e) Increase in the functional avidity of HIV-specific CD8 T cells of patients treated during acute infection who interrupted the antiretroviral therapy [TI] and experienced a virus rebound.