Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
Infection and Immunity, August 2003, p. 4808-4814, Vol. 71, No. 8
0019-9567/03/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.71.8.4808-4814.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, Centre for Health and Population Research, Mohakhali, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh,1 Tropical & Geographic Medicine Center,2 Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114,3 Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health,4 Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 021155
Received 5 February 2003/ Returned for modification 21 April 2003/ Accepted 24 May 2003
|
|
|---|
|
|
|---|
(Preliminary results from this study were presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the International Centers for Tropical Disease Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, Md., April 2002.)
Thirty male and female adult patients with acute watery diarrhea caused by V. cholerae O1 presenting to the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), Centre for Health and Population Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh, were enrolled in this study. Ten matched adults with no history of diarrhea during the previous 3 months were studied as controls. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of ICDDR,B and Massachusetts General Hospital. Patients with confirmed V. cholerae O1 as the sole pathogen were recruited (2, 15, 17, 20). Stools of healthy controls were similarly screened. After rehydration of patients, feces and venous blood samples (30 ml) were collected on the second day of hospitalization (approximately 2 days after onset of diarrhea) as well as 5 and 19 days later during convalescence (approximately 7 and 21 days after onset of symptoms, respectively). Single blood and fecal samples were collected from healthy subjects. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated by gradient centrifugation on Ficoll-Isopaque (Pharmacia, Uppsala, Sweden) from venous blood (20). Serum was collected for antibody assays, aliquoted, and frozen. Fecal extracts were prepared (18), and aliquots were frozen at -70°C. Purified LPS of V. cholerae O1 (16) was used in assays, and MSHA purified from V. cholerae (13) and recombinant CtxB were used in the assays (both kindly provided by Ann Mari Svennerholm).
Wells of ELISPOT plates (Millititer HA; Millipore Corp., Bedford, Mass.) were coated with LPS, MSHA, and CtxB, and assays were carried out as described earlier (5, 16, 18). Affinity-purified goat anti-human immunoglobulin with IgA specificity, conjugated to horseradish peroxidase, was used at a dilution of 1:250 in 1% fetal bovine serum in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS)-Tween 20 (0.05%) as a secondary antibody (Southern Biotechnology Associates, Birmingham, Ala.). The number of lymphocytes expressing IgA reacting with antigens of interest was determined manually by counting positive spots under low-power microscopy (magnification, x40). An ASC response greater than the geometric mean plus two standard deviations of the value observed for healthy controls was defined as a positive response (for CtxB: 22/107 PBMCs; LPS: 15/107 PBMCs; MSHA: 1/107 PBMCs, respectively).
Isolated PBMCs were also incubated in 24-well tissue culture plates at various concentrations (107 to 105/ml of RPMI medium with 10% fetal bovine serum, 1% glutamine, 1% sodium pyruvate and 1% penicillin-streptomycin) at 37°C in 5% CO2 for various periods (24 to 96 h). After incubation, plates were spun at 1,200 x g for 10 min and supernatant was collected. A protease inhibitor cocktail containing aprotinin (0.15 µM), leupeptin (10 µM), sodium azide (15 µM), and 4-(amino ethyl) benzene sulfonyl fluoride (0.2 µM) was added to the supernatant (10 µl/ml of supernatant), and sample aliquots were immediately frozen at -70°C until used as described below.
Serum samples (1:50 dilutions in PBS for testing anti-LPS and anti-MSHA responses; 1:200 dilution for testing anti-CtxB responses) collected from patients at acute (day 2) and convalescent (day 21) stages of infection were tested against LPS-coated (250 ng/well), CtxB-coated (50 ng/well), and MSHA-coated (100 ng/well) plates, utilizing previously described ELISA procedures (16, 18). Plates were developed using 10 mg of ortho-phenylene diamine (Sigma) in 10 ml of 0.1 M sodium citrate buffer (pH 4.5) to which 4 µl of 30% hydrogen peroxide was added just before use. Optical densities were measured kinetically at 450 nm. Plates were read for 5 min at 19-s intervals, and maximum slope for an optical density change of 0.2 U was expressed as milli-optical density absorbance units per min (mAB/min) (4, 12).
Total IgA content in fecal samples was determined by ELISA using pooled human Swedish milk with a known IgA concentration of 1 mg/ml as the standard and using affinity-purified goat antibodies to the F(ab')2 fragment of human immunoglobulin as capture antibody (Jackson ImmunoResearch Laboratories Inc., West Grove, Pa.), using methods described earlier (18, 21). Affinity-purified goat anti-human immunoglobulin with IgA specificity, conjugated to horseradish peroxidase, was used as a secondary antibody (Jackson). Anti-LPS, anti-CtxB, and anti-MSHA fecal IgA responses were detected with affinity-purified rabbit anti-human immunoglobulin with IgA specificity conjugated to horseradish peroxidase as a secondary antibody (Jackson). Responses were measured kinetically and expressed as mAB per minute per microgram of total IgA. For serum and stool responses, a twofold or greater increase from that seen at the acute stage (day 2) was defined as a positive response.
ALS specimens were assayed at dilutions varying from undiluted to 1:10 in PBS and detected with rabbit anti-human IgA-horseradish peroxidase conjugate. Responses were measured kinetically as previously described (4, 12).
Serum samples collected at early (day 2) and convalescent (day 7 and 21) phases of cholera infection were tested for vibriocidal antibody response against the homologous serotype of bacteria using strain V. cholerae O1 El Tor Ogawa (strain 25049) or Inaba (strain 19479) as the target organism in procedures previously optimized (19). A fourfold or greater increase in titer between early and convalescent-phase samples was used to signify seroconversion. A reference pooled serum specimen from V. cholerae O1-infected patients was included in each test to control for variation between analyses (19).
The Wilcoxon signed rank test and the Mann-Whitney U test were used where applicable for statistical analysis. Nonparametric data are expressed as median and 25, 75 centiles; normally distributed data are expressed as geometric means ± standard errors of the mean. The relationship between immunological parameters was assessed using linear regression analysis. A two-sided P value of
0.05 was considered a significant difference. The F test was used to assess the contribution of an independent variable (ALS response) in predicting a dependent variable (ASC response). Analyses were carried out using SigmaStat (Jandel Scientific, San Rafael, Calif.). The sensitivity of the ALS, ASC, and antibody determinations were calculated with a four-field table analysis, using the vibriocidal response as a reference (11).
The clinical and epidemiological features of the cholera and control patients are listed in Table 1. No intestinal pathogens were identified in the stool of cholera patients except for V. cholerae O1. No intestinal pathogens were isolated from the stool of healthy controls.
|
View this table: [in a new window] |
TABLE 1. Clinical features of study patients
|
|
View this table: [in a new window] |
TABLE 2. Vibriocidal (sera) and specific IgA antibody responses (sera and feces) of patients with cholera
|
|
View this table: [in a new window] |
TABLE 3. Sensitivity of immunological assays, compared with the vibriocidal responsesa
|
0.001). To detect ALS IgA immune responses against LPS and MSHA (the latter a weak immunogen), at least 5 x 106 PBMCs were needed to generate a significantly elevated response compared to healthy controls (P
0.01). PBMCs were also cultured for 24 to 96 h before recovering ALS supernatants (data not shown). A 48-h incubation period was optimal when either 1 x 107 or 5 x 106 PBMCs were used for detection of immune responses to any of the three evaluated antigens. When lower numbers of cells were used (106 or 105), a longer incubation time did not improve the response to the weaker immunogens, LPS and MSHA. Under no conditions was 105 PBMCs sufficient to demonstrate a significant immune response to LPS or MSHA. The optimal approach was to recover supernatants from 5 x 106 or 1 x 107 PBMCs after 48 h of culture and then use undiluted supernatants for ALS assays detecting immune responses to weaker immunogens and diluted supernatants for ALS assays detecting immune responses to strong immunogens.
We also measured ALS and ASC responses 21 days after onset of diarrhea in five cholera patients (data not shown). Compared to day 7 responses, ALS and ASC responses were either absent or markedly reduced, suggesting that ALS and ASC responses are optimally measured approximately 1 week after intestinal presentation of antigen (3, 6, 16, 18).
PBMCs from cholera patients were analyzed for both ASC and ALS responses, using blood samples collected on day 2 and day 7 after onset of illness. ASC-IgA and ALS-IgA responses to CtxB, LPS, and MSHA were determined (Fig. 1). For cholera patients, ALS IgA responses to all antigens were low at the acute stage of infection (day 2) but increased significantly by day 7 (P
0.001). ALS responses for cholera patients were also significantly elevated over those for healthy controls (P
0.001). ASC responses to all antigens were also low level on day 2, and they increased significantly by day 7 for cholera patients (Fig. 1). At the acute stage, 90% of patients had low ASC and low ALS responses. When comparing antigen-specific ALS and ASC responses 7 days after infection, we found a significant linear relationship between ALS and ASC responses to each of the antigens tested, with high correlation of ASC and ALS responses in individual patients (Fig. 2) (CtxB, P
0.001; LPS, P
0.001; MSHA, P = 0.008). Six patients with low ASC responses at day 7 (Ct x B-specific responses of <50 ASC/107 PBMC) also had low ALS titers (<5 mAB/min per 107 PBMC).
![]() View larger version (22K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 1. Comparison of ALS and ASC responses to CtxB (A and B), LPS (C and D), and MSHA (E and F). For ALS assays, cells were diluted to 107 PBMCs per ml and incubated for 48 h. Samples were collected on day 2 (d2) and day 7 (d7). Responses in 10 healthy controls (HC) are also represented. Bars represent median values. #, P 0.001, comparing d2 to d7 values and d7 to HC values. R, regression coefficient; F, measurement of the contribution of the independent variable in predicting the dependent variable.
|
![]() View larger version (26K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 2. Relationship of ALS and ASC responses in individual patients to CtxB (A), LPS (B), and MSHA (C). The number of patients compared for each assay is indicated (n).
|
Acute watery diarrhea caused by V. cholerae induces mucosal and systemic antibody responses to cholera toxin and other cell surface components (11, 16, 18). Although the serum vibriocidal response best predicts protective immunity following cholera (10, 11), the reason that a serum, complement-binding antibody assay predicts protection following a noninvasive mucosal infection, such as that caused by V. cholerae, is currently unknown. The vibriocidal response may be a surrogate marker for an as yet undefined mucosal immune response following cholera. Directly measuring mucosal immune responses can, however, be problematic. Our results suggest that measuring specific, in vitro-produced antibodies secreted from intestinal lymphocytes transiently migrating in the peripheral blood may serve such a purpose. The ASC assay detects this migration of mucosal lymphocytes, and our finding that the ALS response similarly peaks on day 7 and is absent by day 21 suggests that the ALS assay also detects these transiently circulating mucosal lymphocytes (3, 6, 16, 18).
The ALS and ASC assays had similar sensitivity compared with the vibriocidal response, with the highest sensitivity associated with immune responses against the potent immunogen CtxB (ALS, 94%; ASC, 81%) and the lowest sensitivity associated with the weak immunogen MSHA (ALS, 69%; ASC, 77%). The ALS and ASC assays were also more sensitive than the fecal antibody assays at detecting recent mucosal infection, probably reflecting protease-driven degradation of antibodies in stool samples. Of note, in our patients, vibriocidal, serum IgA, and stool IgA immune responses against V. cholerae were already significantly increased by day 7. Among our study population, V. cholerae is an endemic infection, and this early increase in immune responses probably reflects an anamnestic response. The ALS responses were either absent or markedly reduced by late convalescence (day 21), while serum IgA responses remained quite high, suggesting that the ALS assay measures antibodies produced by transiently circulating mucosal lymphocytes.
Our study is the first analysis of the ALS assay following a natural intestinal infection. The ALS assay has a number of advantages over the ASC assay, including the ability to easily store supernatants (facilitating future analysis of samples) and the ability to use ALS supernatants in an ELISA format, eliminating subjective variability inherent in the counting of spots in the ASC assay. Although automated counters are now available for the ASC assay, such equipment is not available in most laboratories in the developing world. The ALS procedure may help distinguish recent from remote infection, a distinction that is sometimes difficult to make in individuals in endemic settings.
We are grateful to Ann-Mari Svennerholm, Goteborg University, Sweden, for supplying MSHA and recombinant CtxB.
|
|
|---|
This article has been cited by other articles:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2009 by the American Society for Microbiology. For an alternate route to Journals.ASM.org, visit: http://intl-journals.asm.org | More Info»