Rotavirus-Specific Helper T Cell Responses in Newborns, Infants, Children, and Adults

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Abstract
An obstacle to developing a successful rotavirus vaccine has been the inability to consistently correlate the humoral immune response with protection against disease. Transplacental transfer of maternal rotavirus-specificantibodies may obscure the capacity to discriminate an active from a passively acquired humoral immune response in infants. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, an assay was developed to detect rotavirus-specific helper T cells among circulating mononuclear cells. Rotavirus-specificlymphoproliferative responses and rotavirus-specificneutralizing antibody titers in blood were determined in 11 mother/newborn pairs at the time of deliveryand in 54 infants, children, and adults ranging in age from 16 days to 40 years. Only 1 of 11 infants tested between 16 days and 6 months of age had detectable rotavirus-specifichelper T cell activity whereas 8 of 11 had circulating rotavirus-specific neutralizing antibodies. Acquisition of rotavirus-specific helper T cell activity over the first fewyears of life correlated with the age at which infants and young children are known to be infected with rotavirus. These findings support the hypothesis that detection of rotavirus-specificlymphoproliferative activity in infants may more accurately determine previous exposure to rotavirus than detection of rotavirus-specifie antibodies.

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