T cell repertoire breadth is associated with the number of acute respiratory infections in the LoewenKIDS birth cohort.

ABSTRACT

We set out to gain insight into peripheral blood B and T cell repertoires from 120 infants of the LoewenKIDS birth cohort to investigate potential determinants of early life respiratory infections. Low antigen-dependent somatic hypermutation of B cell repertoires, as well as low T and B cell repertoire clonality, high diversity, and high richness especially in public T cell clonotypes reflected the immunological naivety at 12 months of age when high thymic and bone marrow output are associated with relatively few prior antigen encounters. Infants with inadequately low T cell repertoire diversity or high clonality showed higher numbers of acute respiratory infections over the first 4 years of life. No correlation of T or B cell repertoire metrics with other parameters such as sex, birth mode, older siblings, pets, the onset of daycare, or duration of breast feeding was noted. Together, this study supports that-regardless of T cell functionality-the breadth of the T cell repertoire is associated with the number of acute respiratory infections in the first 4 years of life. Moreover, this study provides a valuable resource of millions of T and B cell receptor sequences from infants with available metadata for researchers in the field.