31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), 9 - 12 Temmuz 2021, ss.5
03325 The tetanus antibody levels in the people living with HIV in a Turkish HIV
care centre
10. Immunology & Vaccinology
A. Nazli 1, B. Kenanoglu 2, M. Isikgoz Tasbakan 2, H. Pullukcu 2, A. Zeytinoglu 3, D. Gokengin 3
1Dokuz Eylul University Medical Faculty Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology
Department - Izmir (Turkey), 2Ege University Medical Faculty Infectious Diseases and
Clinical Microbiology Department - Izmir (Turkey), 3Ege University Medical Faculty Medical
Microbiology Department - Izmir (Turkey)
Background
Even in the golden age highly active antiretroviral therapy, the people living with HIV
have risk of complications from vaccine-preventable diseases. In Turkey, adults were
routinely vaccinated during pregnancy or military service and recommended a rappel
dose after 10 years. There is a lack of routine vaccination program for the people
living with HIV. We aimed to investigate the levels of tetanus antibody levels and the
factors related in the people living with HIV who attended our centre.
Methods
We included the people living with HIV who attended Ege University Medical Faculty
Infectious Disease HIV care outpatient clinic who accepted the informed consent to
give blood sample. We used Enzyme-Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay kit to test
tetanus antitoxin IgG levels. We recorded age, sex, the vaccination history, CD4 T
cell count during vaccination, the time of HIV diagnosis retrospectively.
Results
We included 146 people living with HIV in our study. The 86, 3% was male sex. The
mean age was 39.5 years (±11.20). The mean CD4 T cell count was 485 ±279.18 (1-
1331) / mm3. One hundred and fourteen (78.1%) participants had the protective
antibody level. The rappel dose recommendations according to antibody level
were immediate rappel dose to 32 (21.9%), in five years to 37(25.3%), in ten years
to 69 (47.3%) and after ten years to eight (5.5%) participants. In the multi variate
analysis, the related factors for protective antibody level were CD4 T cell count
>218/ mm3 during vaccination (p= 0,043, OR: 4.28; 95 % CI(1,05-17,44) and age ≥
43 years (p= 0,0001, OR:30,6 (6,51-144,2). One hundred seven (73.2 %)
participants had vaccination history. The duration of vaccination and the antibody
levels were uncorrelated.
Conclusions
The protective antibody levels for tetanus vaccine were low independent of the
vaccination time in the people living with HIV. In every five years, testing of tetanus
antibody level or rappel dose can protect them for the future infections.