Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Southeast of Minas Gerais - Cataguases Advanced Campus, Chácara Granjaria, s/n - Granjaria, 36773-563, Cataguases, Brazil.
Medical School, Presidente Antônio Carlos University, Juiz de Fora, Brazil.
BMC Bioinformatics. 2020 Dec 14;21(Suppl 17):551. doi: 10.1186/s12859-020-03845-3.
An effective yellow fever (YF) vaccine has been available since 1937. Nevertheless, questions regarding its use remain poorly understood, such as the ideal dose to confer immunity against the disease, the need for a booster dose, the optimal immunisation schedule for immunocompetent, immunosuppressed, and pediatric populations, among other issues. This work aims to demonstrate that computational tools can be used to simulate different scenarios regarding YF vaccination and the immune response of individuals to this vaccine, thus assisting the response of some of these open questions.
This work presents the computational results obtained by a mathematical model of the human immune response to vaccination against YF. Five scenarios were simulated: primovaccination in adults and children, booster dose in adult individuals, vaccination of individuals with autoimmune diseases under immunomodulatory therapy, and the immune response to different vaccine doses. Where data were available, the model was able to quantitatively replicate the levels of antibodies obtained experimentally. In addition, for those scenarios where data were not available, it was possible to qualitatively reproduce the immune response behaviours described in the literature.
Our simulations show that the minimum dose to confer immunity against YF is half of the reference dose. The results also suggest that immunological immaturity in children limits the induction and persistence of long-lived plasma cells are related to the antibody decay observed experimentally. Finally, the decay observed in the antibody level after ten years suggests that a booster dose is necessary to keep immunity against YF.
自 1937 年以来，已经有一种有效的黄热病（YF）疫苗。然而，关于其使用的问题仍然知之甚少，例如能够产生针对该疾病免疫力的理想剂量、是否需要加强剂量、免疫能力正常、免疫抑制和儿科人群的最佳免疫接种计划等问题。这项工作旨在表明，计算工具可以用于模拟与 YF 疫苗接种和个体对这种疫苗的免疫反应有关的不同情况，从而有助于回答其中一些悬而未决的问题。
这项工作展示了针对 YF 疫苗接种的人类免疫反应的数学模型所获得的计算结果。模拟了五个方案：成人和儿童的初次接种、成人的加强剂量、接受免疫调节治疗的自身免疫性疾病患者的接种，以及不同疫苗剂量的免疫反应。在有数据的情况下，该模型能够定量复制实验中获得的抗体水平。此外，对于那些没有数据的方案，能够定性再现文献中描述的免疫反应行为。
我们的模拟表明，能够产生针对 YF 免疫力的最小剂量是参考剂量的一半。结果还表明，儿童的免疫不成熟限制了诱导和维持长寿浆细胞的能力，这与实验中观察到的抗体衰减有关。最后，十年后抗体水平的衰减表明需要加强剂量来保持对 YF 的免疫力。
