One dose of COVID-19 vaccine provokes strong immune response in those previously infected
Strong response detected regardless of duration between infection and vaccination; multi-ethnic groups exhibit similar response
2021-02-11
(Press-News.org) Although clinical trial data are encouraging, real-world evidence with regard to the COVID-19 vaccine remains scarce. In particular, response to the vaccine among those previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 is still not completely understood.
Researchers from Bar-Ilan University and Ziv Medical Center now report preliminary evidence that people previously infected with the virus responded very strongly to one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, regardless of when they were infected and whether or not they had detectable antibodies against COVID-19 prior to receiving the vaccine.
Their study, published on February 11, 2021 in the journal Eurosurveillance, was conducted on a cohort of 514 staff members at Ziv Medical Center. Seventeen of them were infected with COVID-19 anytime between one and ten months before receiving the first dose of the vaccine. Antibody levels of the entire cohort were measured prior to vaccination and thereafter to determine response to the vaccine.
The response among those previously infected was so effective that it opens the debate as to whether one dose of the vaccine may suffice. "This finding can help countries make informed decisions regarding vaccine policy - for instance, whether those previously infected should be vaccinated in priority and, if so, with how many doses," says Prof. Michael Edelstein, of the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University, who led the study. "It also offers reassurance that not having detectable antibodies after being infected does not necessarily mean that protection following infection is lost."
The research also provided evidence that immune response was similar across multi-ethnic groups. Ziv Medical Center, where the study was conducted, is staffed by a workforce comprised of Jews, Arabs and Druze, among others. Members of each of these groups responded very similarly to the first dose of the vaccine, a welcome finding considering that the virus itself is known to affect some groups more than others.
The strong response to one dose of the vaccine among those previously infected regardless of the duration between infection and vaccination is good news. However, the researchers emphasize that their findings should be confirmed in a larger cohort before reaching definitive conclusions. The researchers are continuing to follow healthcare workers after their second dose to better understand how long the vaccine will protect against COVID-19 in different groups of people.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-02-11
DALLAS - Feb. 11, 2021 - Fusing the neck's top two vertebrae can prevent repeat strokes in children with bow hunter syndrome, a rare condition that affects a handful of U.S. pediatric patients each year, UT Southwestern researchers suggest in a recent study. The finding, published online in Child's Nervous System, offers a new way to treat these children and protect them from potentially lifelong neurological consequences.
Bow hunter syndrome - so named because of the head's position when a person is shooting an arrow - is a condition affecting children and adults in which turning the head compresses blood vessels supplying the back of the brain from the vertebral artery. In adults, this condition ...
2021-02-11
A new study out of the University of Chicago has found that during the initial wave of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City, only 1 in 5 to 1 in 7 cases of the virus was symptomatic. The research team found that non-symptomatic cases substantially contribute to community transmission, making up at least 50% of the driving force of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The results were published on Feb. 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
When the COVID-19 epidemic arrived in the U.S., the investigators noticed that it was very difficult to estimate what proportion of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 would go on to develop symptoms, partially due to the initial challenges with testing capacity.
"Without ...
2021-02-11
As the number of pregnant women using opioid drugs continues to rise, questions have been raised about the long-term health effects on children exposed to these drugs in the womb. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine now have preliminary but striking evidence that suggests that such exposure can cause long-lasting impairment in the brain's ability to process sensory information. These impairments may give rise to autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and substance use disorders during adolescence. The landmark study, recently published in Journal ...
2021-02-11
It was once thought that Ebola and related filoviruses were more or less contained to Central Africa. After a West African outbreak and the discovery of Reston ebolavirus in the Philippines, cuevavirus in Spain and various bat filoviruses in China, researchers now understand that this viral family--causing hemorrhagic fevers with up to 90% case fatality rates--has been widespread around the world for millions of years.
Our defenses against it are more embryonic, and though we have a vaccine against one species of Ebola and some therapeutic antibodies on the horizon, both have production or distribution issues. What doctors ...
2021-02-11
At a glance:
New study suggests monetary reparations for Black descendants of people enslaved in the United States could have cut SARS-CoV-2 transmission and COVID-19 rates both among Black individuals and the population at large.
Researchers modeled the impact of structural racism on viral transmission and disease impact in the state of Louisiana.
The higher burden of SARS-CoV-2 infection among Black people also amplified the virus's spread in the wider population.
Reparations could have reduced SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the overall population by as much as 68 percent.
Compared with white people, Black individuals in the United States are more likely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, more likely ...
2021-02-11
In a recent article in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, authors gathered previously published research to summarize current thinking on the feasibility and efficacy of using scent detection dogs to screen for the COVID-19 virus. The researchers report that sensitivity, specificity, and overall success rates reported by the canine scent detection studies are comparable or better than the standard RT-PCR and antigen testing procedures.
These findings indicate scent detection dogs can likely be used to effectively screen and identify individuals infected with the COVID-19 virus in hospitals, senior care facilities, schools, universities, ...
2021-02-11
EUGENE, Ore. -- Feb. 11, 2021 -- Researchers have mined and combined information from two databases to link pollen and key plant traits to generate confidence in the ability to reconstruct past ecosystem services.
The approach provides a new tool to that can be used to understand how plants performed different benefits useful for humans over the past 21,000 years, and how these services responded to human and climate disturbances, including droughts and fires, said Thomas Brussel, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Oregon's Department of Geography.
The approach is detailed in a paper published online ...
2021-02-11
Palo Alto, CA-- Understanding how plants respond to stressful environmental conditions is crucial to developing effective strategies for protecting important agricultural crops from a changing climate. New research led by Carnegie's Zhiyong Wang, Shouling, Xu, and Yang Bi reveals an important process by which plants switch between amplified and dampened stress responses. Their work is published by Nature Communications.
To survive in a changing environment, plants must choose between different response strategies, which are based on both external environmental factors and internal nutritional and energy demands. For example, a plant might either delay or accelerate its lifecycle, depending on the availability of the stored ...
2021-02-11
A negative experience with food usually leaves us unable to stomach the thought of eating that particular dish again. Using sugar-loving snails as models, researchers at the University of Sussex believe these bad experiences could be causing a switch in our brains, which impacts our future eating habits.
Like many other animals, snails like sugar and usually start feeding on it as soon as it is presented to them. But through aversive training which involved tapping the snails gently on the head when sugar appeared, the snails' behaviour was altered and they refused to feed on the sugar, even when hungry.
When the team ...
2021-02-11
FRANKFURT. More than two thirds of the earth is covered by clouds. Depending on whether they float high or low, how large their water and ice content is, how thick they are or over which region of the Earth they form, it gets warmer or cooler underneath them. Due to human influence, there are most likely more cooling effects from clouds today than in pre-industrial times, but how clouds contribute to climate change is not yet well understood. Researchers currently believe that low clouds over the Arctic and Antarctic, for example, contribute to the warming of these regions by blocking the direct radiation of long-wave heat from the Earth's surface.
All ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] One dose of COVID-19 vaccine provokes strong immune response in those previously infected
Strong response detected regardless of duration between infection and vaccination; multi-ethnic groups exhibit similar response
