Lineage-specific protection and immune imprinting shape the age distributions of influenza B cases

Marcos C. Vieira (), Celeste M. Donato, Philip Arevalo, Guus F. Rimmelzwaan, Timothy Wood, Liza Lopez, Q. Sue Huang, Vijaykrishna Dhanasekaran, Katia Koelle and Sarah Cobey ()
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Marcos C. Vieira: University of Chicago
Celeste M. Donato: Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
Philip Arevalo: University of Chicago
Guus F. Rimmelzwaan: University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover
Timothy Wood: Institute of Environmental Science and Research
Liza Lopez: Institute of Environmental Science and Research
Q. Sue Huang: Institute of Environmental Science and Research
Vijaykrishna Dhanasekaran: Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University
Katia Koelle: Emory University
Sarah Cobey: University of Chicago

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract How a history of influenza virus infections contributes to protection is not fully understood, but such protection might explain the contrasting age distributions of cases of the two lineages of influenza B, B/Victoria and B/Yamagata. Fitting a statistical model to those distributions using surveillance data from New Zealand, we found they could be explained by historical changes in lineage frequencies combined with cross-protection between strains of the same lineage. We found additional protection against B/Yamagata in people for whom it was their first influenza B infection, similar to the immune imprinting observed in influenza A. While the data were not informative about B/Victoria imprinting, B/Yamagata imprinting could explain the fewer B/Yamagata than B/Victoria cases in cohorts born in the 1990s and the bimodal age distribution of B/Yamagata cases. Longitudinal studies can test if these forms of protection inferred from historical data extend to more recent strains and other populations.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24566-y

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