Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 7 pp 9801—9819
Sex-specific differences of humoral immunity and transcriptome diversification in older adults vaccinated with inactivated quadrivalent influenza vaccines
- 1 National Institute of Engineering Technology Research in Combination Vaccine, Wuhan 430207, Hubei Province, China
- 2 Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd., Wuhan 430207, Hubei Province, China
- 3 China Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Peking 100029, China
- 4 Guangdong Province Institute of Biological Products and Materia Medica, Guangzhou 510440, Guangdong Province, China
- 5 Gaozhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Maoming 525200, Guangdong Province, China
Received: September 17, 2020 Accepted: February 16, 2021 Published: March 19, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202733How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Yang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Clinical data showed sex variability in the immune response to influenza vaccination, this study aimed to investigate differentially expressed genes (DEGs) that contribute to sex-bias immunity to quadrivalent inactivated influenza vaccines (QIVs) in the elderly. 60 healthy adults aged 60-80 yrs were vaccinated with QIVs, and gene expression was analyzed before and after vaccination. The humoral immunity was analyzed by HAI assay, and the correlation of gene expression patterns of two sex groups with humoral immunity was analyzed. The DEGs involved in type I interferon signaling pathway and complement activation of classical pathway were upregulated within 3 days in females. At Day 28, the immune response showed a male-bias pattern associated with the regulation of protein processing and complement activation of classical pathway. A list of DEGs associated with variant responses to influenza vaccination between females and males were identified by biology-driven clustering. Old females have a greater immune response to QIVs but a rapid antibody decline, while old males have the advantages to sustain a durable response. In addition, we identified genes that may contribute to the sex variations toward influenza vaccination in the aged. Our findings highlight the importance of developing personalized seasonal influenza vaccines.