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Background: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection leads to effector memory CD8 + T cell expansion and is associated with immune dysfunction in older adults. However, the molecular alterations of CMV-specific CD8 + T cells in CMV infected healthy young and middle-aged adults has not been fully characterized., Results: We compared CD8 + T cells specific for a CMV epitope (pp65 495-503 , NLV) and an influenza A virus (IAV) epitope (M1 58-66 , GIL) from the same young and middle-aged healthy adults with serum positive for anti-CMV IgG. Compared to the IAV-specific CD8 + T cells, CMV-specific CD8 + T cells contained more differentiated effector memory (T EM and T EMRA ) cells. Isolated CMV-specific central memory (T CM ) but not naïve (T N ) cells had a significant reduced activation-induced expansion in vitro compared to their IAV-specific counterparts. Furthermore, we found that CD70 expression was reduced in CMV-specific CD28 + CD8 + T CM and that CD70 + T CM had better expansion in vitro than did CD70 - T CM . Mechanistically, we showed that CD70 directly enhanced MAPK phosphorylation and CMV-specific CD8 + T CM cells had a reduced MAPK signaling upon activation. Lastly, we showed that age did not exacerbate reduced CD70 expression in CMV- specific CD8 + T CM cells., Conclusion: Our findings showed that CMV infection causes mild expansion of CMV-NLV-specific CD8 + T cells, reduced CD70 expression and signaling, and proliferation of CMV-NLV-specific CD8 + T CM cells in young and middle-aged healthy adults and revealed an age-independent and CMV infection-specific impact on CD8 + memory T cells., (© 2022. The Author(s).)