title: What counts in cytometric analysis to document vaccine immunogenicity?
abstract: Studies on vaccines and infectious diseases are increasingly adding immune cytometry (for e.g., flow cytometry or ELISPOT assays) to the routine use of antibody titers as a way to report immunogenicity. We advocate that the classical presentation of cytometric data in terms of percentages should best be supplemented by an absolute cell count per ml. We do this by discussing a simple hypothetical example illustrating that without knowledge of the absolute cell count per ml detection competition will render a correct comparison between different samples impossible in all situations where an inter-individual or intra-individual (longitudinal) variation in peripheral blood mononuclear cell concentrations is present.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Health Economics Research and Modeling Infectious Diseases, Vaccine & Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. benson.ogunjimi@ua.ac.be
authors.forename: Benson
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ogunjimi
authors.forename: Viggo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Van Tendeloo
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Van Damme
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Beutels
mesh_terms: D000906:Antibodies / Q000032:analysis; D058501:Enzyme-Linked Immunospot Assay / Q000379:methods*; D005434:Flow Cytometry / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007963:Leukocytes, Mononuclear / Q000276:immunology*; D014612:Vaccines / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D000906:Antibodies; D014612:Vaccines