[ad_1]
Six months after receiving the second dose of the two-shot vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, many recipients no longer have vaccine-induced antibodies that can immediately neutralize disturbing variants of the coronavirus, a new study suggests. The researchers analyzed blood samples from 46 healthy adults, mostly young or middle-aged, after receiving both doses and again six months after the second dose. “Our study shows that vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine induces high levels of neutralizing antibodies against the original vaccine strain, but these levels decrease almost 10-fold in seven months” after the initial dose, Bali Pulendran of Stanford University and Emory University’s Mehul Suthar said via email. In about half of all subjects, neutralizing antibodies that can block infection against coronavirus variants such as Delta, Beta and Mu were undetectable six months after the second dose, their team reported on bioRxiv on Thursday https: // bit.ly/3A4p1z0 before peer review. Neutralizing antibodies are not the immune system’s only defense against the virus. Yet they “are critically important for protection against infection with SARS-CoV-2,” Pulendran and Suthar said. “These results suggest that administration of a booster dose approximately 6 to 7 months after the initial vaccination is likely to improve protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants.”
[ad_2]
Source link