Cytomegalovirus (CMV) research in immune senescence comes of age: overview of the 6th International Workshop on CMV and Immunosenescence

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is one of the most complex and most ubiquitous latent persistent viruses, with a considerable ability to evade and manipulate the immune system. Following an early-life infection, most immunocompetent humans spend several decades living with CMV, and, because the virus in these hosts does not cause manifest disease, CMV can be considered part of normal aging for more than half of humanity. However, there is accumulating evidence that CMV carriage is not a null event and that both potentially harmful and potentially beneficial outcomes emanate from the interaction of CMV with its mammalian hosts. This article provides an overview of the 6th International Workshop on CMV and Immunosenescence, highlighting the advances in the field made in the past two years, as related to CMV epidemiology/geroscience, CMV virology with an accent on latency, and CMV immune evasion and immune recognition of the virus and its antigens.