Regulation of Toll-like receptors in fungal keratitis

Fungal keratitis (FK), a potential blinding disease, has been difficult to treat due to the limited number of approved antifungal drugs and the taxing dosing regimen.Toll-like receptors (TLRs) function as the pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) in mammals and play an essential role in the recognition of fungal components.There is a great amount of evidence that TLRs initiate the innate immunity in the FK.Furthermore, TLRs also play roles in shaping fungal-specific humoral and cellular adaptive immune responses.This review described the recent advances in interaction between TLRs and non-TLRs signal transduction, negative regulator and function of TLRs in corneal fungal infection. Key words: Keratitis, fungal; Toll-like receptors; Signal transduction; Nod-like receptors; Dectin-1; Immune tolerance