Lung immune responses are regulated independently of systemic responses. Injected vaccines may induce optimal responses in blood but not at mucosal surfaces. We compared the responses in serum and lung fluid to injected pneumococcal conjugate vaccine.

We tested the hypothesis that conjugate vaccine offered less protection against pneumonia due to a reduced mucosal response compared to serum. We further hypothesized that this response would be further compromised with HIV co-infection[32] due to lack of local CD4 lymphocyte support and an altered alveolar milieu. We measured pneumococcal capsular specific immunoglobulin responses to 7-valent conjugate vaccine in both lung fluid and serum from healthy HIV infected and uninfected volunteers, together with flow cytometric assessment of the relative numbers and phenotypes of BAL T lymphocyte, B lymphocyte and macrophages.

Inclusion Criteria:

• healthy volunteer adults

Exclusion Criteria:

• pregnant, recent illness, previous vaccination, asthma