In 2013, national serosurveillance detected a high seroprevalence of antibodies to pertussis toxin (PT) from Bordetella pertussis among Japanese adults. Thus, we aimed to determine the cause(s) of this high seroprevalence, and analyzed the titers of antibodies to PT and filamentous hemagglutinin (FHA) among adults (35-44 years old), young children (4-7 years old), and older children (10-14 year...

BACKGROUND Cancer vaccines are designed to activate and enhance cancer-antigen-targeted T cells that are suppressed through multiple mechanisms of immune tolerance in cancer-bearing hosts. T regulatory cell (Treg) suppression of tumor-specific T cells is one barrier to effective immunization. A second mechanism is the deletion of high avidity tumor-specific T cells, which leaves a less effectiv...

Traditional serological techniques have some limitations in evaluating the duration of Toxoplasma gondii infection in pregnant women, patients with lymphadenopathy, and older children suspected of having congenital toxoplasmosis. In these three groups of patients, two variants of T. gondii immunoglobulin G (IgG) avidity tests were used: an EIA Kit (Labsystems) and a noncommercial enzyme-linked ...

UNLABELLED T-cell functional avidity is a crucial determinant for efficient pathogen clearance. Although recombinant DNA priming coupled with a vaccinia-vectored vaccine (VACV) boost has been widely used to mount robust CD8+ T-cell responses, how VACV boost shapes the properties of memory CD8+ T cells remains poorly defined. Here, we characterize the memory CD8+ T cells boosted by VACV and demo...

BACKGROUND In order to study the impact on the lung function of patients with cystic fibrosis of the avidity of antipseudomonal antibodies, the avidity of antibodies against the chromosomal beta-lactamase of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (a beta ab) and against the 60-65 kDa heat shock protein of P aeruginosa (anti-GroEL) were measured in serum samples collected longitudinally during chronic infection...

AIMS To optimise the ELISA method for the avidity of IgG antibodies against neurofilament heavy chain (NfH) and to determine the levels and avidity of anti-NfH antibodies in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and a healthy control group. METHODS Various dilutions of sera and concentrations of urea and sodium chloride as chaotropic reagents were tested in the process of the ELISA optimisat...

Toxoplasmosis is an important cause of congenital infection. The present study was performed to evaluate the usefulness of recombinant (r) GRA-7 cloned from nucleotides (n) 39-711 in discriminating between acute and chronic toxoplasmosis. First, commercial IgM, IgG and IgG avidity ELISAs were used to determine the serological profile of the sera. Serum samples were from 20 symptomatic patients ...

Previously, we observed that high-avidity CTL are much more effective in vivo than low-avidity CTL in elimination of infected cells, but the mechanisms behind their superior activity remained unclear. In this study, we identify two complementary mechanisms: 1) high-avidity CTL lyse infected cells earlier in the course of a viral infection by recognizing lower Ag densities than those distinguish...

BACKGROUND The variety and limitations of current laboratory methods for estimating HIV-incidence has driven attempts to improve and standardize the performance of serological 'Tests for Recent HIV-Infections' (TRI). Primary and follow-up HIV-1 positive plasma samples from individuals with well-defined dates of infection collected as part of the German Seroconverter Cohort provided specimens hi...