Finding Adds to Evidence That Boosters Are More
Protective Than Primary Series
Alone
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Dec. 21, 2022 – New
research from the University
of Virginia School of Medicine speaks to the benefits of
a COVID-19 booster.
The new findings shed light on how
mRNA boosters – both Pfizer and Moderna – affect the
durability of our antibodies to COVID-19. A booster, the
researchers report, made for longer-lasting antibodies for
all recipients, even those who have recovered from a
COVID-19 infection.
“These results fit with other
recent reports and indicate that booster shots enhance the
durability of vaccine-elicited antibodies,” said senior
researcher Jeffrey Wilson, MD, PhD, of UVA Health’s
Division of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology.
Tracking
COVID-19 antibodies
Wilson and his collaborators
looked at antibody levels following a booster in 117 UVA
employee volunteers and compared those results with the
levels seen in 228 volunteers after their primary
vaccination series. Antibody levels one week to 31 days
after the primary series and booster were similar, but the
boosted antibodies stuck around longer regardless of whether
the person had had COVID-19.
“Our initial thought
was that that boosters would lead to higher antibody levels
than the primary vaccine series, but that was not what we
found,” said researcher Samuel Ailsworth, the first author
of a new scientific paper outlining the findings.
“Instead, we found that the booster led to longer lasting
antibodies.”
Antibody levels naturally decline over
time after an infection or after vaccination, but higher
levels are thought to be more protective. Thus,
longer-lasting antibodies would be expected to provide more
sustained immunity against severe COVID-19.
The
researchers found that the antibodies generated by the
Moderna booster proved longer lasting than those generated
by the Pfizer booster. Moderna’s antibody levels exceeded
Pfizer’s out to five months, the end of the study period.
Although the findings were statistically significant, Wilson
notes that both mRNA vaccine boosters provide enhanced and
fairly similar levels of protection against COVID-19 in
recently published large epidemiologic
studies.
Because the frequency of COVID-19 infections
in the community was relatively high when the boosters were
being given, the authors also studied the effect of COVID-19
infection on antibody levels. The findings suggest that the
“enhanced antibody durability observed after booster
vaccination was not explained by hybrid immunity,” the
researchers report in their paper.
The new results are
the latest from Wilson’s team tracking the antibody
response to the COVID-19 vaccines over time. The researchers
previously found that after the primary vaccination series
the antibodies
generated by Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine rose more slowly
and declined more quickly than those generated by the
Moderna vaccine. That study also found that older
recipients of the Pfizer vaccine generated fewer antibodies
than did younger recipients – but this wasn’t the case
for Moderna, where age did not appear to be a
factor.
In the latest results, younger booster
recipients initially generated more antibodies than did
older recipients, but this difference disappeared with
time.
Wilson notes that this study adds to the
accumulating evidence that boosters are an important of
protecting the community from COVID-19. “Although only
about half of the U.S. population that is eligible for a
booster has received one, it is increasingly clear that
boosters enhance the protection that is conferred by the
primary series mRNA vaccines alone,” he
said.
Findings Published
The researchers have
published
their latest findings in the scientific journal Annals of
Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. The team consisted of
Samuel M. Ailsworth, Behnam Keshavarz, Nathan E. Richards,
Lisa J. Workman, Deborah D. Murphy, Michael R. Nelson,
Thomas A.E. Platts-Mills and Wilson. The researchers
reported no financial interests in the work.
The
research was supported by the UVA Manning COVID-19 Research
Fund, an American Academy of Allergy, Asthma &
Immunology Faculty Development Award and National Institutes
of Health grant R37-AI20565.
To keep up with the
latest medical research news from UVA, subscribe to the Making
of Medicine blog at http://makingofmedicine.virginia.edu.
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