An extra boost of a vaccine may mean more protection for organ transplant recipients in their fight against COVID-19, a new study finds.
from Johns Hopkins University Hospital shows that there may be a way to improve COVID-19 immunity in these patients: give them a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“This is a [study of] about 30 patients. Not a 200-patient formal trial with standardized timing and endpoints but it’s enough preliminary data to be very encouraging,” Dr. Dorry Segev, the associate vice chair of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital and author of the study, told ABC News.“It gives me hope that transplant patients have immune systems that ultimately will be able to mount an effective response to the vaccine but might just need some help doing it.
While COVID-19 antibody testing was utilized in this study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to not recommend its use in the general public. As stated on the CDC website, “antibody testing is not currently recommended to assess for immunity to COVID-19 following COVID-19 vaccination or to assess the need for vaccination in an unvaccinated person.”
There is immunity developed at the cellular level after infection and vaccination that is more challenging to measure. These T and B cell responses may offer protection regardless of what an “antibody test” dictates. With nearly 39,000 solid organ transplants in 2020 and 17,286 in this year alone, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, a significant number of patients may benefit from an additional COVID-19 vaccine. Due to low immunity, these patients already require additional doses of the hepatitis B and influenza vaccine in order to establish immunity. A third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine series would therefore not be unreasonable.
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