change. T-cell Subsets and Antifungal Host Defenses

# The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract It has been long appreciated that protective immunity against fungal pathogens is dependent on activation of cellular adaptive immune responses repre-sented by T lymphocytes. The T-helper (Th)1/Th2 para-digm has proven to be essential for the understanding of protective adaptive host responses. Studies that have examined the significance of regulatory T cells in fungal infection, and the recent discovery of a new T-helper subset called Th17 have provided crucial information for under-standing the complementary roles played by the various T-helper lymphocytes in systemic versus mucosal antifungal host defense. This review provides an overview of the role of the various T-cell subsets during fungal infections and the reciprocal regulation between the T-cell subsets con-tributing to the tailored host response against fungal pathogens. Keywords T helper cells. Gamma delta T cells. Cytotoxi