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. 2020 Nov 9;15(11):e0241693.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241693. eCollection 2020.

Variation by lineage in serum antibody responses to influenza B virus infections

Yiu Chung Lau  1 , Ranawaka A P M Perera  1 , Vicky J Fang  1 , Long Hei Luk  1 , Daniel K W Chu  1 , Peng Wu  1 , Ian G Barr  2   3 , J S Malik Peiris  1   4 , Benjamin J Cowling  1
Affiliations

Variation by lineage in serum antibody responses to influenza B virus infections

Yiu Chung Lau et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Two lineages of influenza B virus currently co-circulate and have distinct antigenicity, termed Victoria and Yamagata after the B/Victoria/2/87 and B/Yamagata/16/88 strains, respectively. We analyzed antibody titer dynamics following PCR-confirmed influenza B virus infection in a longitudinal community-based cohort study conducted in Hong Kong from 2009-2014 to assess patterns in changes in antibody titers to B/Victoria and B/Yamagata viruses following infections with each lineage. Among 62 PCR-confirmed cases, almost half had undetectable hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) antibody titers to the lineage of infection both pre-infection and post-infection. Among those infected with influenza B/Victoria who showed an HAI titer response after infection, we found strong rises to the lineage of infection, positive but smaller cross-lineage HAI titer boosts, a small dependence of HAI titer boosts on pre-infection titers, and a shorter half-life of HAI titers in adults. Our study is limited by the low HAI sensitivity for non-ether-treated IBV antigen and the incapacity of performing other assays with higher sensitivity, as well as the mismatch between the B/Yamagata lineage circulating strain and the assay strain in one of the study seasons.

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Conflict of interest statement

BJC has received honoraria from Roche and Sanofi. The authors report no other potential conflicts of interest. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Modeled HAI antibody titer dynamics for the participants with and without PCR-confirmed infection in the overall analysis.
Antibody titers measured by the hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) assay against B/Victoria and B/Yamagata lineage viruses (black lines) versus modeled HAI antibody titer dynamics (colored lines) for the PCR-confirmed cases and participants without PCR-confirmed infection from August 2009 to December 2014 included in the overall analysis.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Modeled HAI antibody titer dynamics for the participants with and without PCR-confirmed infection in the sub-analysis.
Antibody titers measured by the hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) assay against B/Victoria and B/Yamagata lineage viruses (black lines) versus modeled HAI antibody titer dynamics (coloured lines) for PCR-confirmed cases and participants without PCR-confirmed infection from August 2009 to December 2014 included in the sub-analysis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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