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

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PLoS One


. 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

• PMID: 33166348
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241693

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.