Pfizer and Moderna jabs could create 'years of immunity even against new strains'; Spain's scientists evaluate findings
Thursday, July 1, 2021 @ 12:18 AM
SCIENTISTS in Spain are discussing recent research that seems to show RNA-messenger vaccines against Covid offer long-lasting immunity, even against newer and more aggressive variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Immunologist Dr Matilde Cañelles of Spain's National Research Council (CSIC) considers the study to have been carried out 'very well' and that its results are 'very useful', but she does have a few minor criticisms, including how the sample size was small and should have included participants aged over 65, to compare these with younger adults.
So far, two RNA-messenger (RNAm) vaccines have been approved and are in use in Europe, the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna – the AstraZeneca and Janssen are 'adenovirus' types, where a dormant virus is placed in a carrier fluid to stimulate the immune system into fighting it off.
The Faculty of Medicine at Washington University in San Luis, Missouri and the ICAHN School of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, with teams led by immunologists Dr Rachel M. Presti and Dr Ali H. Ellebedy, have recently published the results of their research in Nature magazine, and conclude that these vaccines 'induce a robust response in germinal-centre B-cells' which 'allows the generation of solid humoral immunity'.
According to the Navarra Clinical Hospital medical dictionary, the germinal centre is a lymph organ structure where the process of 'maturing of antibody affinity' takes place – or a 'training ground' for B-cells to 'hone' their ability to recognise a virus.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com