Coronavirus news up-to-date: New study! Don’t the vaccines work against corona mutations?

Corona vaccinations apply in the fight against that Coronavirus as the most effective weapon. But the newly discovered corona mutations, which were first discovered in Great Britain, South Africa and Brazil, are currently of concern to researchers. In a new study, scientists found that the vaccines or drugs could lose their effectiveness if the virus mutations spread further.

New study: vaccine antibodies are not effective against corona mutations

According to the scientists, including those from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in the USA, the three virus mutations could evade the antibody protection created by vaccinations, drugs or an infection. These defense cells acted against the original form of the coronavirus.

This is why a greater amount of antibodies are produced in response to a vaccination or produce a natural infection, or antibodies to be used in drugs, are required to neutralize these novel coronavirus variants, compared to the amount needed to fight the original virus line from Wuhan, China. Their results were published in the journal “Nature Medicine”. Here you get to the thesis.

Already read?Immunologist on easing: Infections will “skyrocket”

Don’t corona vaccinations protect against the variants?

“We are concerned that people who we would expect to have a protective level of antibodies because they had Covid-19 or were vaccinated against it may not be protected against the new variants,” said study co-author Michael S Diamond from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.

Whether someone is adequately protected against infection with Sars-CoV-2 also depends on how many antibodies a person makes after infection or vaccination, the researchers said. “Some people produce very high levels and they would probably still be protected against the new, worrying variants. But some people, especially the elderly and immunocompromised, cannot make high levels of the antibodies,” said Diamond.

The vaccine is unlikely to work against these corona variants

They tested for corona mutations to antibodies in the blood of people who had recovered from coronavirus infection or had been vaccinated with Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. The researchers also looked at antibodies in the blood of mice, hamsters and monkeys that had been vaccinated with an experimental Covid-19 vaccine

The investigations showed that the British variant (B.1.1.7) can be neutralized by the same amount of antibody as in the original form. Only in the South African (B.1.135) and Brazilian variants (B.1.1.248; P1) were 3.5 to 10 times as many antibodies required for neutralization. In the test with so-called monoclonal antibodies produced in the laboratory, the results were mixed. They ranged from effective to ineffective.

The fact that the antibodies worked so differently in the various variants is due to a change in the amino acid building block in the spike protein, which is known as E484K. It was found in the mutations from Brazil and South Africa, but not the one from Great Britain.

Already read? Risk for fat people? Corona vaccine less effective in overweight people

Coronavirus news up-to-date: Researchers call for further research

“We don’t yet know exactly what the consequences of these new variations will be,” said Diamond. Antibodies aren’t the only measure of protection; other elements of the immune system may be able to compensate for increased resistance to antibodies. That will find out epidemiologically over time when we see what happens when these variants spread, “he added.

The research team demands that now be investigated how antibodies work against the new virus variants in order to adapt any existing corona vaccines and other antibody treatments.

follow News.de already at Facebook and YouTube? Here you will find the latest news, the latest videos, great competitions and a direct line to the editors.

bos / news.de

– .