Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that two doses of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — confers some protection for people who have received solid organ transplants, it’s still not enough to enable them to dispense with COVID safety measures including masks and physical distancing.
The findings that were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
This is a follow-up study to an earlier one published in March in JAMA, in which the researchers reported that only 17 per cent of the participating transplant recipients produced sufficient antibodies after just one dose of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine regimen.
“While there was an increase in those with detectable antibodies — 54 per cent overall — after the second shot, the number of transplant recipients in our second study whose antibody levels reached high enough levels to ward off a SARS-CoV-2 infection was still well below what’s typically seen in people with healthy immune systems,” says study lead author Brian Boyarsky, M.D., a surgery resident at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“Based on our findings, we recommend that transplant recipients and other immunocompromised patients continue to practice strict COVID-19 safety precautions, even after vaccination,” Boyarsky says.
People who receive solid organ transplants (such as hearts, lungs and kidneys) often must take drugs to suppress their immune systems and prevent rejection.
Such regimens may interfere with a transplant recipient’s ability to make antibodies to foreign substances, including the protective ones produced in response to vaccines.
The new study evaluated this immunogenic response following the second dose of either of the two messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines — made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech — for 658 transplant recipients, none of whom had a prior diagnosis of COVID-19.
The participants completed their two-dose regimen between Dec. 16, 2020, and March 13, 2021.
In the most recent study, the researchers found that only 98 of the 658 study participants — 15 per cent — had detectable antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 at 21 days after the first vaccine dose. (ANI)
