This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
To the Editor, Aeroallergens including plant pollen are continuously inhaled and deposited in the respiratory tract and, together with their soluble components, actively interact with a variety of cells in the airways. 1Besides epithelial cells, B cells, 2 dendritic cells, 3 and macrophages 4 play a prominent role in these interactions. Apart from causing allergic diseases, pollen exposure might also affect host-pathogen interactions. Both, pollen and pathogens including viruses, may be encountered in the respiratory tract at the same time and by the same cells. For example, it has been shown that pollen exposure weakens the innate defense against respiratory viruses. 5 Other viruses that are omnipresent in humans are herpesviruses, due to their capability to persist lifelong in the host. 6 Therefore, a co-occurrence of pollen exposure and herpesvirus infection is likely. We have recently shown that cells persistently infected with gammaherpesviruses responded to environmental nanoparticle exposure by reactivation of latent virus. 7 Therefore, we hypothesized that additional airborne factors like plant pollen might reactivate latent herpesvirus too.To answer this question, persistently murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV-68)-infected macrophages (ANA-1-MHV-68) 7 were incubated with pollen grains or aqueous pollen extracts (APEs), and lytic virus was determined in the supernatant. As shown in Figure 1, both pollen grains (Figure 1A) and APEs (Figure 1B) resulted in an increase of lytic virus in the supernatant, when compared to the control, with significant increases after stimulation with Amb-pollen grains and all tested APEs.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
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