Antibody Subclass and Glycosylation Shift Following Effective TB Treatment.

With an estimated 25% of the global population infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis ( Mtb ), tuberculosis (TB) remains a leading cause of death by infectious diseases. Humoral immunity following TB treatment is largely uncharacterized, and antibody profiling could provide insights into disease resolution. Here we focused on the distinctive TB-specific serum antibody features in active TB disease (ATB) and compared them with latent TB infection (LTBI) or treated ATB (txATB). As expected, di-galactosylated glycan structures (lacking sialic acid) found on IgG-Fc differentiated LTBI from ATB, but also discriminated txATB from ATB. Moreover, TB-specific IgG4 emerged as a novel antibody feature that correlated with active disease, elevated in ATB, but significantly diminished after therapy. These findings highlight 2 novel TB-specific antibody changes that track with the resolution of TB and may provide key insights to guide TB therapy.
Competing Interests: GA is a co-founder of SeromYx Systems Inc. GA’s interests were reviewed and are managed by Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners HealthCare in accordance with their conflict of interest policies. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling Editor has declared past collaborations with the authors TO and SJ within the last two years.
(Copyright © 2021 Grace, Dolatshahi, Lu, Cain, Palmieri, Petrone, Fortune, Ottenhoff, Lauffenburger, Goletti, Joosten and Alter.)