Human cell lines used in a micro neutralization test for measuring influenza-neutralizing antibodies

An in situ neutralization test (NT) including ELISA for the measurement of influenza antigen was developed and evaluated. Two human cell lines, fibroblasts (HS27) cells and salivary gland epithelial duct (HSG) cells, were compared with Madin-Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) cells. The viral production in the human cell lines was lower than that for MDCK cells, which influenced the results of the assay in the HSG and HS27 cells. However, when lowering the infectious dose, the NT using HS27 cells gave a sensitive and stable assay with low background in the ELISA. The NT titres were very low when using HSG cells compared to MDCK cells. The HS27 NT was used to analyze the humoral response after an influenza A infection in patients from a placebo-controlled zanamivir study. We found no differences in NT titres between patients treated with zanamivir or placebo. The MDCK and HS27 NT gave higher titres and more pronounced titre differences than the gold standard haemagglutinin inhibition (HAI) assay. Compared to the HAI assay, the sensitive NT using HS27 cells also revealed heterologous NT-titre rises after influenza infection in the patients.