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The details of the pediatric immune system that supports induction of antibodies capable of neutralizing geographically-diverse or heterologous HIV-1 is currently unclear. Here we explore the pediatric immune environment in neonatal macaque undergoing Simian-HIV infection. Simian-HIV infection of 11 pairs of therapy-naive dams and infant rhesus macaques for 24 months results in heterologous HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies in 64% of young macaques compared to 18% of adult macaques. Heterologous HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies emerge by 12 months post-infection in young macaques, in association with lower expression of immunosuppressive genes, fewer germinal center CD4 + T regulatory cells, and a lower ratio of CD4 + T follicular regulatory to helper cells. Antibodies from peripheral blood B cells in two young macaques following SHIV infection neutralize 13% of 119 heterologous HIV-1 strains and map to regions of canonical broadly neutralizing antibody epitopes on the envelope surface protein. Here we show that pediatric immunity to SHIV infection in a macaque model may inform vaccine strategies to induce effective HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies in infants and children prior to viral exposure., Competing Interests: Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: Pregnancy in women with congenital heart disease (CHD) is associated with increased risk for maternal cardiac complications. Several risk stratification models are used to predict adverse cardiac outcome in women with CHD who become pregnant. This study was set up as an exploratory study to provide a head-to-head comparison of the 4 most commonly used models: CARPREG, CARPREG II and ZAHARA risk scores and mWHO risk classification., Methods and Results: We randomly selected 100 women from the database of paediatric and congenital heart disease of the University Hospitals Leuven. Individual pregnancy risk scores were retrospectively calculated and summarized in a weighted average risk for each risk stratification model. To evaluate accuracy of each model, the weighted average risk was plotted against the actual observed number of "cardiac events" as defined in the respective risk models. Maternal adverse cardiac events occurred in 8% of our study population. Weighted average risks were plotted versus the observed number of events for each model: 10.1% versus 4.0% for CARPREG, 8.6% versus 5.0% for CARPREG II, 11.1% versus 8.0% for ZAHARA and 12.4% versus 8.0% for the mWHO classification., Conclusion: All risk models overestimated maternal cardiac risk. The ZAHARA risk model appeared to be a closer reflection of maternal risk in our cohort of CHD patients. More research on a larger study population is needed., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)