Abstract:
Tick-borne encephalitis is a vaccine-preventable disease of concern for public health in large parts of Europe, with EU notification rates increasing since 2018. It is caused by the orthoflavivirus tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) and a diagnosis of infection is mainly based on serology due to its short viremic phase, often before symptom onset. The interpretation of TBEV serology is hampered by a history of orthoflavivirus vaccination and by previous infections with related orthoflaviviruses. Here, we sought to improve TBEV sero-diagnostics using an antigen combination of in-house expressed NS1 and EDIII in a multiplex, low-specimen-volume set-up for the detection of immune responses to TBEV and other clinically important orthoflaviviruses (i.e., West Nile virus, dengue virus, Japanese encephalitis virus, Usutu virus and Zika virus). We show that the combined use of NS1 and EDIII results in both a specific and sensitive test for the detection of TBEV IgG for patient diagnostics, vaccination responses and in seroprevalence studies. This novel approach potentially allows for a low volume-based, simultaneous analysis of IgG responses to a range of orthoflaviviruses with overlapping geographic circulations and clinical manifestations.
摘要:
蜱传脑炎是欧洲大部分地区公众健康关注的疫苗可预防的疾病,自2018年以来,欧盟通知率不断上升。它是由正黄病毒蜱传脑炎病毒(TBEV)引起的,由于其病毒期短,感染的诊断主要基于血清学,通常在症状发作之前。TBEV血清学的解释受到正黄病毒疫苗接种史和先前相关正黄病毒感染的阻碍。这里,我们试图使用内部表达的NS1和EDIII的抗原组合来改善TBEV血清诊断,用于检测对TBEV和其他临床上重要的正黄病毒的免疫反应的低样本体积设置(即,西尼罗河病毒,登革热病毒,日本脑炎病毒,Usutu病毒和Zika病毒)。我们表明,NS1和EDIII的联合使用导致了用于患者诊断的TBEVIgG检测的特异性和敏感性测试。疫苗接种反应和血清阳性率研究。这种新颖的方法可能允许基于低体积的,同时分析一系列地理循环和临床表现重叠的正黄病毒的IgG应答。