4.6 Article

B-Cell Responses to Human Bocaviruses 1-4: New Insights from a Childhood Follow-Up Study

Journal

PLOS ONE
Volume 10, Issue 9, Pages -

Publisher

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0139096

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Funding

  1. Academy of Finland [1257964]
  2. Helsinki Biomedical Graduate School
  3. Helsinki University Hospital Research Education
  4. Research & Development Funds
  5. Medical Society of Finland
  6. University of Helsinki
  7. Sigrid Juselius Foundation

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Human bocaviruses (HBoVs) 1-4 are recently discovered, antigenically similar parvoviruses. We examined the hypothesis that the antigenic similarity of these viruses could give rise to clinically and diagnostically important immunological interactions. IgG and IgM EIAs as well as qPCR were used to study similar to 2000 sera collected from infancy to early adolescence at 3-6-month intervals from 109 children whose symptoms were recorded. We found that HBoV1-4-specific seroprevalences at age 6 years were 80%, 48%, 10%, and 0%, respectively. HBoV1 infections resulted in significantly weaker IgG responses among children who had pre-existing HBoV2 IgG, and vice versa. Furthermore, we documented a complete absence of virus type-specific immune responses in six viremic children who had pre-existing IgG for another bocavirus, indicating that not all HBoV infections can be diagnosed serologically. Our results strongly indicate that interactions between consecutive HBoV infections affect HBoV immunity via a phenomenon called original antigenic sin, cross-protection, or both; however, without evident clinical consequences but with important ramifications for the serodiagnosis of HBoV infections. Serological data is likely to underestimate human exposure to these viruses.

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