Herpes simplex virus infects skin gamma delta T cells before Langerhans cells and impedes migration of infected Langerhans cells by inducing apoptosis and blocking E-cadherin downregulation.

The role individual skin dendritic cell (DC) subsets play in the immune response to HSV remains unclear. We investigated the effect of HSV on DC virus uptake, viability, and migration after cutaneous infection in vitro and in vivo. HSV increased the emigration of skin DCs from whole skin explants over 3 d postinfection (p.i.) compared with mock controls, but the kinetics of emigration was influenced by the skin DC subset. Uninfected (bystander) Langerhans cells (LCs) were the major emigrant DC subset at 24 h p.i., but thereafter, large increases in infected CD103(+)langerin(+) dermal DC (dDC) and uninfected langerin(-) dDC emigration were also observed. LC infection was confirmed by the presence of HSV glycoprotein D (gD) and was associated with impaired migration from cultured skin. Langerin(+) dDC also expressed HSV gD, but infection did not impede migration. We then followed the virus in live MacGreen mice in which LCs express GFP using a fluorescent HSV-1 strain by time-lapse confocal microscopy. We observed a sequential infection of epidermal cells, first in keratinocytes and epidermal gammadelta T cells at 6 h p.i., followed by the occurrence of HSVgD(+) LCs at 24 h p.i. HSV induced CCR7 upregulation on all langerin(+) DC, including infected LCs, and increased production of skin TNF-alpha and IL-1beta. However, a large proportion of infected LCs that remained within the skin was apoptotic and failed to downregulate E-cadherin compared with bystander LCs or mock controls. Thus, HSV infection of LCs is preceded by infection of gammadelta T cells and delays migration.