Ebola Virus Disease Survivors Show More Efficient Antibody Immunity than Vaccinees Despite Similar Levels of Circulating Immunoglobulins

Till Koch,N’Faly Magassouba,Christine Dahlke,Marylyn M Addo,Beatriz Escudero-Pérez,Sergio Gomez-Medina,César Muñoz-Fontela,My Linh Ly,Matthias Pillny,Monika Rottstegge,Paula Ruibal,Miles W Carroll,Fara Raymond Koundouno,Joseph Akoi Bore,Stephan Günther,Emily V Nelson

doi:10.3390/v12090915

Abstract

The last seven years have seen the greatest surge of Ebola virus disease (EVD) cases in equatorial Africa, including the 2013–2016 epidemic in West Africa and the recent epidemics in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The vaccine clinical trials that took place in West Africa and the DRC, as well as follow-up studies in collaboration with EVD survivor communities, have for the first time allowed researchers to compare immune memory induced by natural infection and vaccination. These comparisons may be relevant to evaluate the putative effectiveness of vaccines and candidate medical countermeasures such as convalescent plasma transfer. In this study, we compared the long-term functionality of anti-EBOV glycoprotein (GP) antibodies from EVD survivors with that from volunteers who received the recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus vectored vaccine (rVSV-ZEBOV) during the Phase I clinical trial in Hamburg. Our study highlights important differences between EBOV vaccination and natural infection and provides a framework for comparison with other vaccine candidates.

Highlights

Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a severe hemorrhagic fever caused by viruses of the genus Ebolavirus, more prominently by Ebola virus
To characterize the presence of anti-EBOV antibodies in survivors and vaccine recipients in the long-term after recovery and vaccination, we first sought to determine the overall levels of EBOV-GP
In this study we compared the levels of EBOV-specific antibodies and the antibody-mediated memory immune responses in EVD survivors and recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV)-ZEBOV vaccinees long-term after discharge and vaccination (6 months), respectively. Both survivors and vaccinees sustained similar levels of serum anti-EBOV Ig, but the antibody-mediated immune responses were superior in survivors

Summary

Introduction

Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a severe hemorrhagic fever caused by viruses of the genus Ebolavirus, more prominently by Ebola virus (species Zaire ebolavirus, EBOV). The magnitude of the EVD epidemic in West Africa allowed for the first clinical. These research efforts have significantly improved our understanding of EVD pathophysiology and immunity. Regarding the latter, findings from several laboratories indicate that acute EVD is characterized by exacerbated and sustained adaptive immune responses [2,3,4] and that both arms of the adaptive immunity are critical for recovery [5,6,7]. Antibodies exert several complementary functions during the immune response to pathogen invasion These functions rely on the structure of the antibody molecule, consisting of the variable region (Fab) which harbors a hypervariable antigen-binding site as well as a constant region (Fc)

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