Safety and immunogenicity of conjugate quadrivalent meningococcal vaccination after hematopoietic cell transplantation

Abstract

Immunization with the conjugated quadrivalent (serogroups A, C, Y, and W-135) meningococcal vaccine (MCV4) after hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is recommended. However, immune responses to MCV4 have not been prospectively studied after HCT. We conducted a vaccine response study among 67 adults who received 1 MCV4 dose a year after autologous or allogeneic HCT from January to September 2014. Pre- and postvaccination serogroup serum bactericidal antibody (SBA) titers were measured a median of 57 days after vaccination. Serogroup-specific responses were defined as a fourfold increase in SBA titer with postvaccination titers $1:8. Prior to vaccination, 44 (65.7%) patients had no protective titers (,1:8) to any meningococcal serogroup, and 3 (4.5%) patients had protective titers to all 4 serogroups. The median serogroup-specific postvaccination SBA titers were 1:2048 for A, 1:64 for C, 1:128 for W-135, and 1:128 for Y (P, .001 for all pre- and postvaccination pairwise comparisons; similar among serogroups, Spearman r 0.5-0.6, P, .0001). Among serogroup-specific nonimmune patients prior to vaccination, serogroup-specific response rates were 76.9%, 65.5%, 51.7%, and 65% to serogroups A, C, W-135, and Y, respectively. One dose of MCV4 elicited protective titers in the majority of patients. These data suggest that a second vaccine dose may be beneficial.