Early sex-related transcriptional differences in CD8+ T cells responding to chronic viral infection reveal a sex bias in exhaustion development

In acute-resolving infection, effector cells mediate acute responses and memory cells provide long-lived protection against future exposures. In chronic infection and cancer, an altered state called exhaustion occurs.

Exhausted CD8+ T cells are molecularly and functionally distinct from effector and memory cells. Differences in immune responses exist between biological sexes, however, how biological sex influences the timing and transcriptional programs of CD8+ T cell responses during chronic versus acute viral infection remains unknown. Here, we show that male and female CD8+ T cells exhibit transcriptional differences in their early responses during chronic but not acute viral infection in vivo.