Opinion | Dr. Jalal Baig: Why Covid-19 vaccine booster shots are being over-hyped by drug companies. - NBCNewsTHINK
. Though antibody tests are readily available, easy to measure and provide instant gratification, their assessment isn’t entirely illuminating at this point. While they have historically been a crucial gauge to assess other kinds of vaccines, we still lack full knowledge on how informative they are about the efficacy of the revolutionary mRNA mechanism the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use.
“We know the antibody response from these vaccinations is waning, but we don’t know what the protective threshold is. We just don’t have enough information on these mRNA vaccines,” said Mark Slifka, a vaccinologist at Oregon Health and Science University. “All of our other vaccine-preventable diseases are prevented by antibodies, and that’s why people are focusing on that.”
Regularly forgotten is that these antibodies represent just one layer of a complexfortress designed to thwart Covid’s assault on the body. Even as these antibodies disappear in the months following inoculation, anremains intact and ready to pounce within days or less if the virus is detected in the body.
This long-term immunity is undergirded by two types of cells that operate after the initial wall of antibodies is breached. While the enduring virus may cause symptoms at this stage, this other arm of the immune system will work to arrest Covid’s further advances and prevent serious illness. One of them, memory B cells, produce a multitude of additional antibodies. The other, T cells, directly target and destroy virus-infected cells independently of antibodies. The
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