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The Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, which the company recently found to be 94% effective, causes the human immune system to produce strong antibodies that last for at least three months, a study showed Thursday.
Researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which co-developed the drug, studied the immune response of 34 adult participants, young and old, in the first stage of a clinical trial.
In the New England Journal of Medicine, they said that the antibodies, which prevent the SARS-CoV-2 virus from invading human cells, “declined slightly over time, as expected, but remained high in all. participants 3 months after the vaccination booster. “
The vaccine, called mRNA-1273, is given as two injections 28 days apart.
Even though the antibody count in the study subjects waned over time, this is not necessarily a cause for concern.
NIAID Director Anthony Fauci and other experts have said that it is very likely that the immune system will remember the virus if it is reexposed later, and then produce new antibodies.
Encouragingly, the study showed that the vaccine activates a certain type of immune cell that should help with the so-called memory response, but only a longer-term study will confirm if this will actually be the case.
“The positives of the study include evidence that a relatively strong antibody response remains 90 days after the second dose of the vaccine,” said virologist Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University-Texarkana.
“The amount of antibodies produced by the vaccine was higher in younger patients than in older patients, but reasonably strong immune responses were still seen even in patients up to age 70.”
The Moderna vaccine will be reviewed by a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee on December 17 and may be given the green light for emergency approval soon after.
Like another vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech, it is based on new technology that uses genetic material in the form of mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid).
The mRNA is locked in a lipid molecule and injected into the arm, where it causes cells inside our muscles to build a surface protein for the coronavirus.
This tricks the immune system into thinking it has been infected with a microbe and causes it to create the right kind of antibody when it encounters the real virus.
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