Influenza imparts an age-related increase in mortality and morbidity. The most effective countermeasure is vaccination; however, vaccines offer modest protection in older adults. To investigate how ageing impacts the memory B cell response we tracked haemagglutinin specific B cells by indexed flow sorting and single cell RNA sequencing in twenty healthy adults administered the trivalent influenza vaccine. We found age-related skewing in the memory B cell compartment six weeks after vaccination, with younger adults developing haemagglutinin specific memory B cells with an FCRL5+ 'atypical' phenotype, showing evidence of somatic hypermutation and positive selection, which happened to a lesser extent in older persons. We confirmed the germinal center ancestry of these FCRL5+ 'atypical' memory B cells using scRNASeq from fine needle aspirates of influenza responding human lymph nodes and paired blood samples. Together, this study shows that the aged human germinal center reaction and memory B cell response following vaccination is defective.

中文翻译：

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老年人对流感疫苗接种的记忆B细胞反应减弱

流感会导致与年龄相关的死亡率和发病率增加。最有效的对策是接种疫苗；但是，疫苗对老年人的保护作用中等。为了研究衰老如何影响记忆B细胞反应，我们通过对二十种接种三价流感疫苗的健康成年人进行索引流分类和单细胞RNA测序，追踪了血凝素特异性B细胞。疫苗接种六周后，我们发现记忆B细胞区隔存在与年龄相关的偏斜，年轻的成年人出现具有FCRL5 +“非典型”表型的血凝素特异性记忆B细胞，显示出体细胞超突变和阳性选择的证据，这种情况发生的程度较小老年人。我们确认了这些FCRL5 +“非典型”的生发中心血统 使用来自流感反应人淋巴结和配对血液样本的细针穿刺液中的scRNASeq记忆B细胞。总之，这项研究表明，接种疫苗后老年人的生发中心反应和记忆B细胞反应存在缺陷。