High frequency of pre-existing neutralizing antibody responses in patients with dengue during an outbreak in Central Brazil

Background: This study aims to identify dengue neutralizing antibody response in patients with dengue from a well-characterized cohort during an outbreak in central Brazil, 2012-2013. Methods: We analyzed paired samples from 40 patients with severe dengue and 20 patients with dengue. Eligibility criteria were: IgM, NS1Ag and/or RT-PCR positivity and positive IgG result. Plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT50) from DENV-1 to DENV-4 was performed to identify serotype-specific NAbs response. An infecting serotype was defined as >= 4-fold increase in DENV NAbs in paired samples. Monotypic response was classified as PRNT50 >= 1/20 to only one DENV serotype, and multitypic response was considered to be PRNT50 >= 1/20 to two or more serotypes simultaneously. Results: Patients were mainly adults. Virological dengue infection was confirmed by RT-PCR: DENV-4 (n = 14) and DENV-1 (n = 10). Forty-four out of 60 (73.3 %) patients had NAbs to DENV-4, DENV-1(68.3 %), DENV-2 (68.3 %) and DENV-3 (61.6 %) respectively. Fifteen percent of the cases presented monotypic response, whereas 85 % had multitypic response. DENV-4 infected-patients presented the greatest difference in PRNT50 titers compared with other serotypes. Pre-existing DENV NAbs was not correlated with disease severity. This was the first time that DENV-4 was implicated in an epidemic in the region. Conclusion: Our data indicates high exposure of multiple DENV serotypes in all age groups in the pre-dengue vaccine era and also previous to Zika virus introduction in Brazil.