This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Reprints and Permissions Copyright Information Books from ASM Press MicrobeWorld Google Scholar Articles by Steele, J. Articles by Woodman, C. B. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Steele, J. Articles by Woodman, C. B.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Clin. Vaccine Immunol. doi:10.1128/CVI.00013-08
Copyright (c) 2008, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Measurement of the humoral immune response following an incident HPV16 or HPV18 infection in young women using a pseudovirion-based neutralising antibody assay

CRUK Institute for Cancer Studies, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: j.c.steele{at}bham.ac.uk.

	Abstract

We have evaluated a neutralising antibody assay which uses HPV16 and HPV18 pseudovirions carrying a secretory alkaline phosphatase reporter gene, and which can potentially measure functionally-relevant HPV type-specific neutralising antibodies. The reproducibility of the assay was excellent; for HPV16, the intra- and inter-assay kappa values were 0.95 and 0.90, respectively; and for HPV18, the corresponding values were 0.90 and 0.90. This assay was used to describe the kinetics of the neutralising antibody response in a cohort of 42 young women who were recruited soon after first intercourse, and who first tested positive for HPV16 DNA, or HPV18 DNA, or both, during follow-up. Most women seroconverted following the first detection of type-specific HPV DNA, and remained seropositive until the end of follow-up. Our findings are broadly consistent with those of two other cohort studies which have measured the serological response following an incident infection using the technically simpler virus like particle-based ELISA.