The results of this study should be interpreted with
certain limitations taking under consideration that
PBMC exposed to authentic HCV were isolated from a
single healthy donor. The observations made might be
limited to this particular donor and experiments with
cells from other healthy individuals are needed to
confirm the findings. However, we have previously reported
that a comparable shift in the CD4+ to CD8+ T
cell ratio also occurred after exposure to native HCV of
T cells from another healthy donor [7].