Owusu Dorcas O, Adankwah Ernest, Aniagyei Wilfred, Acheampong Isaac, Minadzi Difery, Yeboah Augustine, Arthur Joseph F, Lamptey Millicent, Vivekanandan Monika M, Abass Mohammed K, Kumbel Francis, Osei-Yeboah Francis, Gawusu Amidu, Batsa Debrah Linda, Debrah Alexander, Mayatepek Ertan, Seyfarth Julia, Phillips Richard O, Jacobsen Marc
Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR), Kumasi 00233, Ghana.
Department of Medical Diagnostics, College of Health Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi 00233, Ghana.
Vaccines (Basel). 2023 Apr 17;11(4):855. doi: 10.3390/vaccines11040855.
BCG vaccination is recommended for healthy babies after birth in several countries with a high prevalence of tuberculosis, including Ghana. Previous studies showed that BCG vaccination prevents individuals from developing severe clinical manifestations of tuberculosis, but BCG vaccination effects on the induction of IFN-γ after infection have hardly been investigated. Here, we performed IFN-γ-based T-cell assays (i.e., IFN-γ Release Assay, IGRA; T-cell activation and maturation marker assay, TAM-TB) in children who had contact with index tuberculosis patients (contacts). These contacts were classified as either being BCG vaccinated at birth ( = 77) or non-BCG-vaccinated ( = 17) and were followed up at three timepoints for a period of one year to determine immune conversion after exposure and potential infection. At baseline and month 3, BCG-vaccinated contacts had significantly lower IFN-γ levels after stimulation with -specific proteins as compared to non-BCG-vaccinated contacts. This resulted in decreased proportions of positive IGRA results (BCG-vaccinated: 60% at baseline, 57% at month 3; non-BCG-vaccinated: 77% and 88%, respectively) at month 3. However, until month 12, immune conversion in BCG-vaccinated contacts led to balanced proportions in IGRA responders and IFN-γ expression between the study groups. TAM-TB assay analyses confirmed higher proportions of IFN-γ-positive T-cells in non-BCG-vaccinated contacts. Low proportions of CD38-positive -specific T-cells were only detected in non-BCG-vaccinated contacts at baseline. These results suggest that BCG vaccination causes delayed immune conversion as well as differences in the phenotype of -specific T-cells in BCG-vaccinated contacts of tuberculosis patients. These differences are immune biomarker candidates for protection against the development of severe clinical tuberculosis manifestations.
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