Hepatitis B immunization of healthy elderly adults: relationship between naïve CD4+ T cells and primary immune response and evaluation of GM-CSF as an adjuvant.

The efficacy of granulocyte–macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) to enhance the primary immune response to hepatitis B vaccine was studied in healthy elderly with young volunteers included as controls in this double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of GM-CSF as an immune adjuvant. Na¨ive T-helper cells (CD4+CD45RA+) were determined at baseline. Forty-five healthy elderly (average age, 74 years) and 37 healthy young controls (average age, 28 years) were randomized. Hepatitis B vaccine was administered at 0, 1, and 6 months. GM-CSF as a single injection of either 80 μg or 250 μg with the first and second doses of hepatitis B vaccine. In this trial GM-CSF did not enhance antibody responses. However, the antibody responses were dramatically different between these two groups: 35/35 young developed a protective titer versus 19/45 elderly (P < 0.0001). In addition, the mean logarithm of anti-hepatitis B antibody level in the 35 young who completed the study was 3.17 (log mIU/ml) but only 2.21 in the 19 elderly responders (P < 0.0001). Na¨ive T-helper cells differed significantly between the two groups: the mean percentage of CD4+CD45RA+ T cells was 47.9% versus 35.0% (P < 0.0001) in the young and elderly volunteers respectively. Na¨ive T cells also differed significantly between elderly who did or did not respond to HBV (39.9% vs. 31.7%, P = 0.039). Using linear regression, age, and percent na¨ive, CD4 T cells were determined to significantly influence the anti-hepatitis B antibody response, but sex and dose of GM-CSF did not. For a two-parameter model: logarithm of antibody titer = (−0.038 × age in years) + (0.031 × % na¨ive CD4T cells) + 2.68; adjusted r2 = 0.605 and P < 0.0001. However, age had a larger effect than na¨ive CD4 T cells, i.e., in comparing young and elderly groups the log antibody titer decreased by 1.73 due to the increase in age but only 0.40 due to the decrease in na¨ive CD4 T cells. Thus, there was a large effect of age that could not be explained by the quantitative change in the na¨ive T-helper cells.