Abstract
The BNT162b2 vaccine is highly effective against COVID-19 infection and was delivered with a 3-week time interval in registration studies. However, many countries extended this interval to accelerate population coverage with a single vaccine. It is not known how immune responses are influenced by delaying the second dose. We provide the assessment of immune responses in the first 14 weeks after standard or extended-interval BNT162b2 vaccination and show that delaying the second dose strongly boosts the peak antibody response by 3.5-fold in older people. This enhanced antibody response may offer a longer period of clinical protection and delay the need for booster vaccination. In contrast, peak cellular-specific responses were the strongest in those vaccinated on a standard 3-week vaccine interval. As such, the timing of the second dose has a marked influence on the kinetics and magnitude of the adaptive immune response after mRNA vaccination in older people.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 14 |
| Journal | npj Vaccines |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 27 Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information: This work was supported by the UK Coronavirus Immunology Consortium (UK-CIC) MR/V028448/1 awarded to PM, in addition to funding from DHSC/UKRI and the National Core Studies Immunity programme. MC_PC_20031 awarded to PM. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the paper.Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party
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Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2022.
Citation: Parry, H., Bruton, R., Stephens, C. et al. Extended interval BNT162b2 vaccination enhances peak antibody generation. npj Vaccines 7, 14 (2022).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41541-022-00432-w
