Background: Measurement of antibody responses to polysaccharide antigens
is regarded as an important assessment of an individual's ability to respond to
carbohydrate antigens. The currently used assays for the measurement of
pneumococcal-specific antibody use the multi-serotype vaccine Pneumovax®
as the detection antigen.
Methods: An equal potency enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)
system was used to compare the measurement of serotype-specific antibody with the
multi-serotype assay.
Results: Our results show that the concentration of specific antibody to
Pneumovax is not related to the concentration of antibody to the individual
serotypes. Neither is any correlation found between the antibody concentrations to
any of the three single serotypes investigated, to the mixture of the three serotypes
or to Pneumovax.
Conclusion: We conclude that the measurement of the concentration of the
specific antibody to the mixed serotypes present in Pneumovax has serious limitations
when used to evaluate the protection acquired from Pneumovax immunization against any
specific serotype.
