, and good agreement were observed among all assays, although the Xpert and Aptima assays, which provided the most similar outputs (estimated mean viral loads of 2.67 log copies/ml [95% confidence interval [CI], 2.50 to 2.84 log copies/ml] and 2.68 log copies/ml [95% CI, 2.49 to 2.86 log copies/ml], respectively), correlated best with the RealTime assay (89.8% concordance, with Pearson r values of 0.97 to 0.98). These three assays exhibited greater precision than the NucliSens v2.0 assay. All assays were equally sensitive for subtype B and AG/G samples and for samples with viral loads of 1.60 to 3.00 log copies/ml. The NucliSens v2.0 assay underestimated A1 samples and those with viral loads of >3.00 log copies/ml. The RealTime assay tended to underquantify subtype C (compared to the Xpert and Aptima assays) and subtype A1 samples. The Xpert and Aptima assays were equally efficient for detection of all subtypes and viral loads, which renders these new assays most suitable for clinical HIV laboratories.

The elderly immune system is characterized by reduced responses to infections and vaccines, and an increase in the incidence of autoimmune diseases and cancer. Age-related deficits in the immune system may be caused by peripheral homeostatic pressures that limit bone marrow B-cell production or migration to the peripheral lymphoid tissues. Studies of peripheral blood B-cell receptor spectratypes have shown that those of the elderly are characterized by reduced diversity, which is correlated with poor health status. In the present study, we performed for the first time high-throughput sequencing of immunoglobulin genes from archived biopsy samples of primary and secondary lymphoid tissues in old (74 ± 7 years old, range 61-89) versus young (24 ± 5 years old, range 18-45) individuals, analyzed repertoire diversities and compared these to results in peripheral blood. We found reduced repertoire diversity in peripheral blood and lymph node repertoires from old people, while in the old spleen samples the diversity was larger than in the young. There were no differences in somatic hypermutation characteristics between age groups. These results support the hypothesis that age-related immune frailty stems from altered B-cell homeostasis leading to narrower memory B-cell repertoires, rather than changes in somatic hypermutation mechanisms. Keywords:Aging r B cells r Bone marrow r Immunoglobulin repertoire r Secondary lymphoid tissues Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher's web-site IntroductionThe age-related changes in the structure and function of the immune system are usually manifested as increased susceptibility Correspondence: Prof. Ramit Mehr e-mail: ramit.mehr@biu.ac.il to infections (both primary and secondary responses) and cancers, poor responsiveness to new or evolving pathogens, reduced efficacy of vaccination and increased incidence of autoimmune diseases [1][2][3][4][5]. This results in increased disease burdens and health- * These authors contributed equally to this work. * * These authors contributed equally to this work as senior authors.C 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.eji-journal.eu Eur. J. Immunol. 2016. 46: 480-492 Molecular immunology 481 care costs [3,6,7]. Intrinsic changes in primary and secondary lymphoid tissue function, including hematopoietic stem cells in the bone-marrow (BM), are associated with aging. Literature on immunosenescence has focused mainly on T-lineage impairments, as thymus involution is probably the most well-studied age-related immune dysfunction. In addition, there are age-related defects in the ability of CD4 + and CD8 + T cells to respond to T-cell receptor engagement, a propensity of CD4 + cells to differentiate into Th17 cells at the expense of Th1 and Th2 differentiation and an increase in regulatory T-cell numbers and function [4,8].In the B-cell lineage, changes were observed in the composition of B-cell subtypes in both BM and periphery that may result from increased B-cell longe...

Between December 2016 and June 2017, 19 Hepatitis A virus (HAV)-positive cases, 17 of which were among men who have sex with men (MSM) were identified in the Tel Aviv area. Seven of the 15 sewage samples collected between January and June 2017 were also HAV-positive. All sequences clustered with two of the three strains identified in the current European HAV outbreak. We demonstrate that despite an efficient vaccination programme, HAV can still be transmitted to an unvaccinated high-risk population.