Antibody responses to influenza a H1N1 vaccine compared to the circulating strain in influenza vaccine recipients during the 2013/2014 season in North America.

BACKGROUND: Influenza strain A/California/07/2009 H1N1 (H1N1-09) reemerged in 2013/2014 as the predominant cause of illness. We sought to determine if antigenic drift may have contributed to the decreased responses to influenza vaccine.

METHODS: Fifty adults who received trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV3) and 56 children who received live attenuated quadrivalent influenza vaccine (LAIV4) had hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) and microneutralizing (MN) antibodies measured in plasma against H1N1-09 and H1N1 2013/2014 (H1N1-14) influenza. Partial sequencing of the hemagglutinin gene (nt 280-780) was performed on 38 clinical isolates and the vaccine prototype.

RESULTS: In IIV3 recipients, HAI and MN titers against H1N1-14 were significantly lower than against H1N1-09 (p<0.0001 and 0.04, respectively). In LAIV4 recipients, only MN titers were significantly lower (p=0.02) for H1N1-09 compared with H1N1-14. A combined analysis showed significantly lower HAI and MN titers for H1N1-14 compared with H1N1-09 (p=0. 016 and 0.008, respectively). All 38 clinical isolates encoded the HA gene K166Q non-synonymous substitution; other non-synonymous substitutions were observed in <10% of the clinical isolates.

CONCLUSIONS: 2013/2014 IIV3 and LAIV4 recipients had consistently lower MN antibody titers against H1N1-14 compared with H1N1-09. The HA K166Q mutation, located in a neutralizing epitope, probably contributed to these findings.