Antibody-dependent enhancement (
ADE), sometimes less precisely called
immune enhancement or
disease enhancement, is a phenomenon in which binding of a virus to suboptimal
antibodies enhances its
entry into
hostcells, followed by its
replication.
[1][2] The suboptimal antibodies can result from natural infection or from vaccination. ADE may cause
enhanced respiratory disease and acute lung injury after respiratory virus infection (ERD) with symptoms of monocytic infiltration and an excess of eosinophils in respiratory tract.
[3] ADE along with type 2 T helper cell-dependent mechanisms may contribute to a development of the vaccine associated disease enhancement (VADE), which is not limited to
respiratory disease.
[3] Some vaccine candidates that targeted coronaviruses, RSV virus and Dengue virus elicited VADE, and were terminated from further development or became approved for use only for patients who had those viruses before.