Antibodies from the first covid vaccine limit the efficacy of booster doses

Since the vaccination arrived in Spain at the end of 2020, millions of people have accessed it to benefit from their antibodies and strengthen their immune system. The truth is that the first dose against covid it induces powerful boosters against the virus, but the defenses generated by that inoculation could “harm” the booster vaccines.

According to the study of Northwestern Medicine this is because these antibodies “absorb” the booster dose quickly, before it has a chance to stimulate immune system cells, according to their findings, published in the scientific journal Cell Reports.

The same antibodies that protect against the virus are responsible for eliminating the vaccine very quickly. “They think that the vaccine is the virus,” explained Pablo Peñaloza-MacMaster, lead author of the study, which has been carried out in both humans and mice.

The researcher clarifies that having antibodies and receiving a booster dose is a “good” thing, so all people who find it necessary to inoculate themselves with the booster dose should do so. “We don’t want people to think otherwise,” he says. To that extent, the study points to possible strategies by which new-generation vaccines could be adjusted to improve their effectiveness.

The scientists, who studied a group of 85 people who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccinesdiscovered that those who had received a single dose of the vaccines had more antibodies than those who were inoculated twice.

After this test, they saw that in mice the antibodies generated by the first doses of the vaccines were eliminated more quickly.

In experiments with mice, the scientists found that the omicron-adapted vaccines they are superior to the initial vaccines in eliminating infection by this variant. However, the superiority of the omicron-adapted vaccine is more limited if the animal has already received the original vaccine or has passed the coronavirus.