Antibody but not memory B-cell responses are tuned-down in vertically HIV-1 infected children and young individuals being vaccinated yearly against influenza

Yearly immunization against seasonal influenza is highly recommended for HIV-1 infected individuals but evaluating the success of vaccination by serological markers may not be fully informative in this population. Recently, it has been hypothesized that the generation of long-lasting immune responses may depend on whether similar antigens challenge the immune system frequently and intermittently. In the present study, in order to search for additional correlates of vaccine-induced protective immunity and to further dissect this theory, both humoral and memory B-cell responses to the trivalent 2012-2013 seasonal influenza vaccination has been evaluated by strain-specific (separately for H1N1, H3N2 and B strain) standard hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assay and B-cell enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot (ELISpot) in a cohort of vertically HIV-1 infected children and young individuals as compared to age-matched healthy controls. A high number of HIV-1 infected individuals had protective antibody levels prior to vaccination and showed low seroconversion rates after vaccination as compared to healthy controls. On the contrary, similar frequencies of influenza-specific memory B-cells were detected by B-cell ELISpot in both groups suggesting that an adequate B-cell response has been elicited. Data from the H1N1 strain, which is recurrent in seasonal influenza vaccines since 2009, pointed out decreasing antibody but not memory B-cell responses for HIV-1 infected patients being vaccinated for a greater number of years. Further investigations are required to standardize the influenza-specific B-cell ELISpot and to understand whether it could be used routinely as an additional tool to evaluate response to influenza vaccination in immune-compromised individuals being vaccinated yearly.