Optimization of a protocol for the evaluation of antibody responses to human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination in low-resource settings
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Date
2022
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BioMed Central
Abstract
Introduction: Available human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines could have an important primary role in cervical can‑
cer prevention once their long-term immunogenicity and safety are evaluated at the population level. The aim of this
study was to optimize an assay to be used in evaluating the long-term durability of HPV vaccine response following a
pilot vaccination of adolescent girls in Ghana.
Methods: A rapid, high-throughput, indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was optimized for the
detection and quantitation of anti-HPV L1 (late expression protein: types 6, 11, 16 and 18) immunoglobulin G (IgG)
in human serum (n=89). The utility of the assay was demonstrated using serum collected from a cohort of pre adolescent
girls (n=49) previously vaccinated with a quadrivalent vaccine and non-immune serum obtained from
age-matched controls (n=40).
Results: The assay showed good discrimination of antibody levels between cases and control sera: seroprevalence of
anti-HPV IgG antibodies was signifcantly higher among vaccinated than unvaccinated girls for both HPV-16 (63.3% vs.
12.5%; p<0.001) and HPV-18 (34.7% vs. 20.0%; p=0.042), respectively. Thirty-six months after receiving the third dose
of vaccine, signifcantly higher mean anti-HPV-16 (0.618 vs. 0.145), anti-HPV-18 (0.323 vs. 0.309), and anti-HPV-6 (1.371
vs. 0.981) antibody levels were measured, compared to unvaccinated girls (all p<0.05). A correlation between optical
density and antibody activity indicated assay sensitivity to increasing levels of antibody activity.
Conclusion: We have successfully optimized and implemented a robust and sensitive assay for the evaluation of
antibody responses among immunized adolescent girls for monitoring future large-scale HPV vaccination studies in
low-income settings. Our results demonstrated greater immunoglobulin G antibody activity within serum drawn from
adolescent girls immunized 36 months prior.
Description
This article is published by BioMed Central and is also available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-022-01821-y
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Citation
Donkoh et al. BMC Women’s Health (2022) 22:234 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-022-01821-y