Little role of anti-gB antibodies in neutralizing activity of patient's sera with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection

ABSTRACT

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) gB is known to play important roles in cell surface attachment, virion penetration, spread of infection from cell to cell, and provocation of neutralizing antibody. This study was performed to determine the role of anti-HCMV gB antibody in overall neutralizing response in patients with HCMV infection and healthy control with past infection. HCMV gB was stably expressed in 293 cells. With the stable cell line expressing gB as a specific immunosorbent, anti-gB antibody was removed from the current and past HCMV-infected sera and the remaining neutralizing activity was measured by plaque assay. It was shown that 19-50% of the total virus-neutralizing activity of sera with past HCMV infections was derived from anti-gB antibody, but anti-gB antibody had little effect on the total serum virus-neutralizing activity in patients currently infected with HCMV. This result suggests that neutralizing antibody to HCMV gB may reflect disease status.