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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.
Sec. Clinical Infectious Diseases
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2025.1538188
This article is part of the Research Topic Emerging Mechanisms of Host-Pathogen Interactions and immune responses View all articles

Age-specific kinetics of neutralizing antibodies and infection enhancement among <1 year-old Indian infants

Provisionally accepted
Shweta Chelluboina Shweta Chelluboina Akhilesh Chandra Mishra Akhilesh Chandra Mishra Vidya Avinash Arankalle Vidya Avinash Arankalle Shubham Shrivastava Shubham Shrivastava *
  • Interactive Research School for Health Affairs, Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University, Pune, India

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Infants born to dengue-immune mothers acquire maternal antibodies to dengue. Maternal antibodies decline over time making infants susceptible to primary dengue infections. Another important concern is maternal antibodies' role in causing antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) during secondary infections. In this study, we aimed to investigate the kinetics of DENV-neutralizing antibodies and infection-enhancing activity in Indian infants.Healthy infants at birth (cord blood), 3, 6, 9, and 12 months of age (n=32/group) were included in this cross-sectional study. Serum samples were tested for neutralizing antibodies by focireduction neutralization test and enhancing antibodies by ADE assay against DENV1-4 serotypes.Neutralizing antibody positivity declined with the increasing age of infants. Undetectable levels of neutralizing antibodies to DENV1-4 serotypes were reported in 84% of infants by 9 months. Significantly lower neutralizing antibody titers were also reported in 9-month-old infants compared to that in 6-month-old infants and infants at birth. Comparable levels of enhancement of DENV1-4 infection at a particular dilution to at least one serotype were noted in infants at 3 and 6 months of age. Fold enhancement of DENV1-4 infection was reported highest in 6-month-old infants at the dilution of 1:20. In summary, our data suggests that DENV infection-enhancing activity aligns with the decline of neutralizing antibodies.Our study indicates that maternally acquired neutralizing antibodies could be protective till 6 months of age and capable of facilitating ADE on exposure to dengue infections in later months of life.

    Keywords: Dengue, neutralizing antibodies, Infection enhancement, infants, ADE

    Received: 02 Dec 2024; Accepted: 04 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Chelluboina, Mishra, Arankalle and Shrivastava. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Shubham Shrivastava, Interactive Research School for Health Affairs, Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University, Pune, India

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