{"doi":"10.1371/journal.ppat.1010903","title":"The PD-1/PD-L1 pathway is induced during Borrelia burgdorferi infection and inhibits T cell joint infiltration without compromising bacterial clearance","abstract":"The Lyme disease bacterial pathogen, Borrelia burgdorferi, establishes a long-term infection inside its mammalian hosts. Despite the continued presence of the bacteria in animal models of disease, inflammation is transitory and resolves spontaneously. T cells with limited effector functions and the inability to become activated by antigen, termed exhausted T cells, are present in many long-term infections. These exhausted T cells mediate a balance between pathogen clearance and preventing tissue damage resulting from excess inflammation. Exhausted T cells express a variety of immunoinhibitory molecules, including the molecule PD-1. Following B. burgdorferi infection, we found that PD-1 and its ligand PD-L1 are significantly upregulated on CD4+ T cells and antigen presenting cell subsets, respectively. Using mice deficient in PD-1, we found that the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway did not impact bacterial clearance but did impact T cell expansion and accumulation in the ankle joint and popliteal lymph nodes without affecting B cell populations or antibody production, suggesting that the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway may play a role in shaping the T cell populations present in affected tissues.","journal":"PLoS Pathogens","year":2022,"id":262512,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":14,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9431,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":514766,"name":"Julie McCarthy","orcid":"0000-0002-6370-5951","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":918915,"name":"Machlan Sawden","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":520575,"name":"Michael N. Starnbach","orcid":"0000-0003-4465-712X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":282574,"name":"Linden T. Hu","orcid":"0000-0003-1659-5558","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":520573,"name":"Jennifer D. Helble","orcid":"0000-0003-3518-069X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":66,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:26:25.074177Z","pmid":"36265003","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}