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We provide follow-up data on the humoral immune response after COVID-19 vaccinations of two distinct cohorts aged below 60 and over 80 years to screen for age-related differences in the longevity and magnitude of the induction of the antibody responses post booster-vaccinations. While anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike-specific IgG and neutralization capacity waned rapidly after the initial vaccination schedule, additional boosters highly benefitted the humoral immune responses especially in the elderly cohort, including the neutralization of Omikron variants. Thus, adjusted COVID-19 booster vaccination schedules are an appropriate tool to overcome limitations in the success of vaccinations.

The underlying molecular mechanism and their general effect on the replication capacity of HIV 1 drug-resistance-associated mutations is often poorly understood. To elucidate the effect of two such mutations located in a region with a high density of spicing regulatory elements on the HIV-1-splicing outcome, bioinformatic predictions were combined with transfection and infection experiments. Results show that the previously described R263K drug-resistance-associated integrase mutation has additionally a severe effect on the ESE2b splicing regulatory element (SRE) in exon 2b, which causes loss of SD2b recognition. This was confirmed by an R263R silent mutation with a similar predicted effect on the exon 2b SRE. In contrast, a V260I mutation and its silent counterpart with a lower effect on ESS2b did not exhibit any differences in the splicing pattern. Since HIV-1 highly relies on a balanced splicing reaction, changes in the splicing outcome can contribute to changes in viral replication and might add to the effect of escape mutations toward antiviral drugs. Thus, a classification of mutations purely addressing proteins is insufficient.