T cell responses to hepatitis B surface antigen are detectable in non-vaccinated individuals

Abstract

CONCLUSION:Our data suggest that there is no general immune deficiency in non-/low-responders. Thus, we hypothesize that the induction of anti-HBsAg responses by vaccination is significantly dependent on the pre-existing T cell repertoire against the specific antigen rather than the presence of a general T cell defect. INTRODUCTIONWorldwide, hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections are a growing problem with a high prevalence of over 8% hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) positive individuals in Africa, South America, parts of Eastern Europe, South Asia, and Canada [1] . It is estimated that approximately 350 million people are chronic carriers of HBV with 1-1.5 million dying from liver cirrhosis and primary liver cancer [2] . Nowadays, protective repeated vaccinations with recombinant HBsAg are not only recommended to all health care workers and travellers, but have recently been included in the childhood and adolescence immunization schedule. Hepatitis B vaccinations prevent HBV infections as well as its complications in most of the vaccines [3,4] . However, 5% to 10% fail to produce protective anti-HBsAg titers after three vaccinations irrespective of the source of the antigen, which is a problem not only for health care workers, and represents a major medical as well as economic challenge [5][6][7] . Low-(HBsAg titer 10-99 kU/L) or Abstract AIM: To evaluate, whether humoral hepatitis-B-vaccine non-responders also fail to mount a T cell response and to compare these results to normal vaccines. RAPID COMMUNICATION T cell responses to hepatitis B surface antigen are detectable in non-vaccinated individuals

Comparing Humoral and Cellular Immune Response Against HBV Vaccine in Kidney Transplant Patients

“…Our observation that frequencies of cytokine-producing Thcells are the highest in HRs and the lowest in NRs confirms data from healthy individuals, whose quantities of IFNg-, TNFa-, and IL-2-expressing T cells correlated with declining serum antibody titers (25). In contrast to several reports relying also on the quantification of IFNg as a readout for the vaccine-induced cellular response (26,27), we demonstrated that IL-2 and TNFa are the major cytokines being secreted upon HBsAg challenge in both patients and controls. This is in line with previous data of healthy subjects (19,28), which investigated HBs-Ag specific multifunctional CD4 þ CD40L þ T cells and found a dominance of IL-2 and TNFa double producers in healthy subjects.…”

“…In contrast to several reports relying also on the quantification of IFNg as a readout for the vaccine-induced cellular response (26,27), we demonstrated that IL-2 and TNFa are the major cytokines being secreted upon HBsAg challenge in both patients and controls. This is in line with previous data of healthy subjects (19,28), which investigated HBs-Ag specific multifunctional CD4 þ CD40L þ T cells and found a dominance of IL-2 and TNFa double producers in healthy subjects.…”

Humoral and cell-mediated immune responses after a booster dose of HBV vaccine in HIV-infected children, adolescents and young adults

“…In agreement with our data, a recent work analyzing immunological response to Hepatitis B vaccination in treated HIV infection, has shown that IFNγ secretion by CD8+ T cells after Hepatitis B-specific stimulation is significantly increased in responders only [ 25 ]. Other reports studying T-cell immunity after HBV vaccination have shown that responders to vaccination display increases in cytokine production, especially Th1 cytokines, whereas non-responders fail to mount a cytokine response when challenged with HBV antigens, which is in agreement with our data [ 26 – 29 ].…”

Pre-vaccination inflammation and B-cell signalling predict age-related hyporesponse to hepatitis B vaccination

“…To date, studies of responses to vaccination have revealed associations with human leucocyte antigen polymorphisms 4 , innate and adaptive immune cell phenotypes 5 , suggesting that VHR results from the simultaneous interplay of many elements 6 . The impracticality of sampling human lymphoid organs coupled with limited translatability of animal models 7 poses a formidable challenge to the discovery of these mechanisms as well as biomarkers of VHR using single-hypothesis approaches.…”