This Article Full Text (PDF) Other Versions of this Article: CVI.00036-08v1 15/5/799    most recent 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 Plested, J. S. Articles by Granoff, D. M. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Plested, J. S. Articles by Granoff, D. M.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Clin. Vaccine Immunol. doi:10.1128/CVI.00036-08
Copyright (c) 2008, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Vaccine-Induced Opsonophagocytic Immunity to Neisseria meningitidis group B

Center for Immunobiology and Vaccine Development, Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, CA 94609

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: dgranoff{at}chori.org.

	Abstract

The role of opsonophagocytosis (OP) in protection against meningococcal disease is controversial because patients with deficiencies in terminal complement proteins whose sera support OP but not bactericidal activity (BA) are at greatly increased risk of disease. We assayed complement-mediated BA and OP bactericidal activity in sera from 32 adults immunized with an outer membrane vesicle (OMV) vaccine given alone or combined with an investigational recombinant protein, genome-derived Neisserial antigen (GNA) 2132. The sera were heat-inactivated to remove internal complement activity and BA was measured with exogenous non-immune human serum as a complement source. OP was measured with human polymorphonuclear cells (PMNs) and C6-depleted complement, which without PMNs did not support BA. Before immunization, 9 to19 percent of sera from subjects in both vaccine groups combined had BA titers 1:4, which increased to 41 to 72 percent after immunization (P<0.01 against each of three test strains). The respective percentages of sera with OP titers 1:5 were 3 to 16, which increased to 55 to 72 (P<0.001 for each strain). Most post-immunization BA-positive sera were OP-positive, but 10 to 37 percent of BA-negative sera also were OP-positive. Comparing the two vaccine groups, there were no significant differences in the respective percentages of sera with BA or OP except for a higher percentage of OP against one strain in post-immunization sera from subjects in the combination vaccine group (P0.02). The data support independent roles for serum BA or OP bactericidal activity in protection against group B disease.