Learn more about the effectiveness of Sputnik V against disturbing variants of COVID-19

The Sputnik V vaccine was the world’s first registered COVID-19 vaccine. It was developed by the National Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology Gamaleya and registered in Russia on August 11, 2020. It is made from human adenoviral vectors from which their reproductive genes have been turned off. It is already authorized in 69 countries, including Argentina and recently Chile.

Today, the results of a study that scientists from the ANLIS / Malbrán Institute in Argentina and the United States conducted collaboratively to assess the protection of Sputnik V when people are exposed to new variants of the coronavirus .

The work was carried out with serum samples from 12 people in Argentina who had received two doses of the Sputnik V vaccine, according to reported in the magazine Nature Communication the team of scientists, composed of the Argentinian scientist Claudia Perandones -from ANLIS / Malbrán, reporting to the nation’s Department of Health, Benhur Lee and Jeremy Kamil, who work in the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, New York, United States.

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants has raised concerns as it is not known how resistant they may be to current vaccines. They found that the Sputnik V vaccine is effective in neutralizing the Alpha variant of the coronavirus, but that it is not as effective against the Beta variant.

The Sputnik V vaccine has a declared efficacy of 91.6% after phase III clinical trials conducted between September 7 and November 24, 2020. However, many interesting and worrying variants, such as Alpha (B.1.1.7) and Beta (B.1.351), were not present in Russia during the trial period and it was not known what might be the neutralizing effect of Sputnik. V against these variants.

To study the effectiveness of the Sputnik V vaccine, Benhur Lee, Perandones and their colleagues used recombinant viruses carrying the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein mutations found in the Alpha and Beta variants or simply the E484K spike mutation (present in several variants of interest). They analyzed 12 serum samples from Sputnik V vaccine recipients in Argentina one month after completing a two-dose regimen.

They found that the sera exhibited effective neutralization against the Alpha variant. The sera showed moderately reduced activity against the E484K mutation alone and markedly reduced activity against the beta variant. When extrapolated to whole serum strength, only one of the samples showed effective neutralization against the beta variant.

The authors note that, although analysis of a larger sample is warranted, the ability of the beta variant and the E484K mutation to escape neutralization by antibodies in the analyzed samples suggests that the control of some emerging variants could. benefit from updated vaccines.

The Alpha variant of the coronavirus was detected in September last year in the UK and reported as a variant of concern last December. It gained prominence in the wave of infections that occurred at the end of the year in England, and which led the government to adopt restrictive measures and to postpone the application of second doses of the vaccine to increase the number of people with access to at least one dose.

Meanwhile, the beta variant was detected in South Africa in May of last year. It was listed as a variant of concern last December.

Another scientific work on Sputnik V had already been published in Argentina. This was an investigation carried out in the province of Buenos Aires. He found that the amount of antibodies capable of neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 in previously infected people who received a single dose of the Sputnik V vaccine, from the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow, Russia, is 10 times higher. than that of these unprecedented volunteers. infection that has received the full two-dose vaccination schedule.

This work also determined that after a dose of the Sputnik V vaccine, 94% of the people who participated in the study, without previous infection, developed specific antibodies against the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), and the number increased by 100% after completing the two-dose schedule. All the details of the work were published on Cellular Reports Medicine, a premium open access journal from the same editorial group as the journal Cell.

This work was carried out by Andrea Gamarnik, head of the Molecular Virology Laboratory of the Leloir Institute Foundation (FIL) and senior researcher at CONICET. He found that in patients with a history of COVID-19, the second dose did not produce additional benefits in terms of antibody response.

The Sputnik V vaccine was authorized by the Russian government in early August 2020 on the basis of phase I and II studies. The interim Phase III analysis was published in the journal The Lancet in February 2021, it indicated an efficacy of 91.6% with no unusual side effects.

On July 21, 2021, the Chilean Institute of Public Health (ISP) announced the authorization of the emergency use of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V against Covid-19, Chile became the 69th country in the world to approve the Sputnik V. The total population of all countries where it is approved exceeds 3.7 billion people, or nearly half of the world’s population.

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