Dendritic cells: The warriors upfront-turned defunct in chronic hepatitis C infection

Table 1 Summary of mechanisms of dendritic cell impairment

Mechanism	Effect on immune system	Ref.
STAT3 phosphorylation and activation of PI3K pathway	Reduced Th1 cell development	Tacke et al[38]
Interference with TRIF and IPS-1 signaling pathway	Exhaustive function of CD8+ T-cells	Rodrigue-Gervais et al[40]
Down modulation of costimulatory molecules	DC dysfunction	Bain et al[32], Rana et al[54]
Upregulation of inhibitory receptors	Impaired DC function and exhaustion of T cell functions	Freeman et al[42]
Upregulation of IDO	Immune tolerance	Schulz et al[45]
Increased expression of SOCS	Negative regulators of JAK/STAT signalling,	Kim et al[52]
	differentiation of DCs to tolerogenic cell	Li et al[53]

DC: Dendritic cell; Th1: T helper 1; SOCS: Suppressor of cytokine signalling; IDO: Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase; IPS: Interferon β promoter stimulator-1; TRIF: Toll/interleukin-1 domain-containing adapter-inducing interferon γ.