Immunoblot Analysis of Sera from Patients and Vaccinees

This chapter will describe the use of the immunoblotting method for analysing antibody specificities towards meningococcal antigens in sera from vaccinees, receiving group B meningococcal outer-membrane vesicle (OMV) vaccines, or from patients, falling ill with meningococcal disease. The power of the blotting technique lies in the simultaneous identification of many immunogenic components in a sample. Within the meningococcal field, this method has been employed in analyzes of antibody specificities of sera from vaccinees (1 –6 ), patients (7 –10 ), and carriers (11 ,12 ) as well as for characterization of OMV vaccines (13 ,14 ). Some of these studies present various ways of quantifying the blotting results (5 ,7 ,9 ,11 ).