Feasibility of Applying a Prediction-Based Approach for Improving Efficiency of Specific Plague Preventive Measures in Natural Foci of the Russian Federation

Introduction: The high epidemic potential and the presence of natural foci of Yersinia pestis necessitate timely revision of specific plague preventive measures. Individual and group plague vaccination schedules are being developed for annually vaccinated populations based on the post-vaccination immunity status and its prediction for the next booster dose.

Objective: To determine probability ranges for predicting immune responses in order to assess the feasibility of applying a prediction-based approach to planning specific plague prevention measures.

Materials and Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort analysis of immune responses to plague vaccination in 340 individuals using immunological monitoring data for 2016–2022. A customized expert assessment method for immune response types and the possibility of predicting them was applied based on a nonparametric analysis of Th-1 (IFN-γ, TNF-α) and Th-2 (IL-4)-associated cytokines and specific antibodies to the plague capsular antigen before and 12 months after vaccine administration using Statsmodels by Python and Microsoft Excel 2016.

Results: The ratios of individual and group types of immunoreactivity were determined in the examined subjects. We found low, normal, and high immune responses in 18 %, 71 %, and 11 % of cases, respectively. Over the four-year observation period, normal immune responses were repeatedly found in 71–86 % of the subjects, while low and high responses persisted in 7–18 % and 7–11 % of the subjects, respectively. We established a 1.7-fold increase in the proportion of individuals with a low type of immunoreactivity among the respondents revaccinated multiple times but a 6-fold increase in the proportion of individuals with high immune responses among those administered one or two doses.

Conclusion: The conducted analysis of the recurrence of immune response types allowed us to determine feasibility of predicting the immune response to the next revaccination in the group of population annually vaccinated against plague.

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