Volume 224, Issue 7, 1 October 2021

Authentic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 B0.1.1.7 (alpha) is efficiently neutralized by monoclonal antibodies and convalescent and vaccine-elicited serum samples. However, bamlanivimab, casirivimab, convalescent, and BNT2b2 or messenger RNA1273 vaccine-elicited serum samples are less effective against authentic B0.1.351 (beta) and P0.2 (zeta), both carrying E484K in vitro.

In an RCT in a high-income setting (with neonatal HepB vaccination), infants randomized to neonatal BCG vaccination had a small, −3.2 (95% CI, −9.0 to 2.6), reduction in the risk of respiratory tract infection in the first year of life.

The leading malaria vaccine, RTS,S, induced antibodies that mediate various Fc-dependent effector functions. High levels of antibodies with multiple functional activities were associated with protection against homologous malaria challenge. This provides valuable insights for improving RTS,S or future malaria vaccines.

The adjuvanted recombinant zoster vaccine induced strong humoral and polyfunctional cell-mediated immune responses that persisted above prevaccination levels through 1 year after dose 2 and was safe in adults aged ≥65 years, irrespective of previous live-attenuated herpes zoster vaccine administration.

We developed an assay to determine the CMV IgG status based on dried buccal swab samples. Assay validation on a set of 1784 samples revealed 99% sensitivity and specificity. We describe CMV prevalence statistics for Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, and Chile.

Polyomaviruses possess a poorly understood latent life cycle allowing persistent lifelong infection. This study reveals that polyomavirus latency is regulated by cellular degradation of the polyomavirus replication protein, large T. The mTOR inhibitors used in transplant immunosuppression can inhibit this process, promoting polyomavirus replication.

Adult group B Streptococcus (GBS) burden is considerably greater than previously recognized, and there is a need to develop ways to preventing GBS among the growing population of adults who are older or have chronic medical conditions.

Using injectable cabotegravir for HIV prevention could, if efficacious, be a valuable addition to the portfolio of HIV prevention options in South Africa and could have a substantial impact on the progression of the epidemic.

HIV-negative men who have sex with men (MSM), especially MSM with a high numbers of sexual partners, have higher CD8⁺ T-cell counts resulting in lower CD4⁺/CD8⁺ T-cell ratios, compared with HIV-negative men who only have sex with women.

In people living with HIV who participate in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study, we observed state-of-the-art performances in forecasting individual onsets of chronic kidney disease with different machine learning algorithms.

We demonstrated similar estimates of variation for classic and next-generation quantitative viral outgrowth assays (QVOAs), with enhanced sensitivity supporting the use of next-generation QVOAs as a proxy for classic QVOAs in measuring the latent human immunodeficiency virus reservoir.

We identified a Dectin-2 N170I mutation in an immunocompromised patient who died of complications of invasive aspergillosis. This mutation results in an early stop codon and poor receptor expression and renders Dectin-2 functionally defective.

Patients with chronic granulomatous disease display a pathologic hyperinflammatory response to Aspergillus that results in lung injury. In a mouse model, this is dependent on tumor necrosis factor production by neutrophils with impaired reactive oxygen species generation.

Widely used perinatal antibiotics resulted in a significantly decreased vertical transmission of microbes from mothers to infants’ gastrointestinal tract after birth. Infants treated with antibiotics had more microbes deriving from other environmental sources.

We here propose a set of bacterial biomarkers indicative of a higher risk of precancerous anal lesions, which combination was highly specific. Our findings indicate that the microbiota could be developed as a complementary diagnostic tool for anal cancer screening.

Plasmodium falciparum gametocyte carriage was induced in malaria-naive volunteers by mosquito bite or blood-stage inoculum. Gametocyte densities were associated with preceding gametocyte commitment transcript numbers. After blood-stage malaria, gametocyte densities were sufficiently high to allow transmission to mosquitoes.