Consensual immunity: success-driven development of T-helper-1 and T-helper-2 responses

Non-germline-encoded T- and B-cell receptors allow humans to effectively deal with rapidly mutating pathogens. Here, we argue that, in addition to determining the antigenic specificity of immune responses, the same receptor systems can also regulate the T-helper-1/T-helper-2 profile of immunity. Such a mechanism — based on feedback from distinct effector cells to dendritic cells, rather than on instruction from pathogens — uses the effectiveness of particular effector cells at targeting and destroying a pathogen as a reliable, experience-based criterion to induce and maintain the appropriately polarized response.