'Early Results Promising For RNA COVID Vaccine In Older Adults,' Univ. of Minn., NIH

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Mon Nov 23, 2020, 02:28 AM - Edit history (1)

-'Early results promising for RNA COVID vaccine in older adults,' CIDRAP, Univ. of Minnesota, (NIH), Sept. 30, 2020.

Researchers studying Moderna's SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 vaccine report that its safety profile and immune response in older people is comparable to that in the younger population they tested earlier, according to phase 1 trial results published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

The messenger RNA vaccine is one of only a few COVID-19 vaccines being studied specifically in older patients, despite their vulnerability during the pandemic.

While the original study pool for the mRNA-1273 vaccine was for adults ages 18 to 55, the researchers expanded the study to include adults ages 56 to 70 and 71 and older, with 20 participants in each age-group. The vaccine is designed to trigger a protective immune response by introducing RNA from the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S-2P) into the body.

Higher dosage tied to stronger response: Half (10) of the participants in each age-group received two 25-microgram (μg) doses of the candidate vaccine 27 days apart, and half (10) received two 100-μg doses.

Day 57 results for those who received 25-μg doses showed an anti-S-2P geometric mean titer (GMT) of 323,945 for those 56 to 70 years of age and a GMT of 1,128,391 for those 71 years or older. For those who received 100-μg doses, the GMT was 1,183,066 and 3,638,522, respectively.

All of these were above the GMT of the study's donated convalescent serum, which was 138,901. The vaccine also seemed to evoke a strong CD4 cytokine response with type 1 helper T cells.

Adverse effects were generally mild or moderate and most commonly included fatigue, chills, headache, myalgia and pain at the injection site. All but two instance of moderate systemic adverse effects happened after the second injection, and the researchers reported only two cases of severe systemic effects, also after the second injection. One was fever in the 56-to-70-year-old 25-μg dose subgroup, and the other was fatigue in the 71-and-older 100-μg subgroup.

The authors, from a number of universities across the United States, write, "Important limitations of this study include the small numbers of participants and the limited ethnic diversity"...

More, https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/09/early-results-promising-rna-covid-vaccine-older-adults

[Guilded Lilly]

1. K&R with hope!

[sprinkleeninow]

2. Give it..

'Give It To Me Baby'

[appalachiablue]

3. Step on it, and make mine a double

[sprinkleeninow]

4. Double shot. (Alright. 2 vaccine shots spaced apart for efficacy.)

SWINGIN' MEDALLIONS • 'DOUBLE SHOT OF MY BABY'S LOVE'

I don't remember these guys being so dorky..

[MFM008]

5. something tells me in a year

there are going to be multiple vaccines available everywhere.
I pray this is so.

[Rollo]

6. OK, so I'm wondering if either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines...

... have technology that limits the virus's ability to circumvent the vaccine with mutation(s).

This technology, as I understand it, involves having the vaccine target multiple areas of the RNA chain. Vaccines that target just one area are most likely to be defeated by virus mutation. But vaccines that target multiple RNA sequences are far less likely to be vulnerable to virus mutation. That's because the virus is thought not to be able to mutate enough to defeat multiple sequence vaccines.

Or so I've read.

[intrepidity]

7. The technology can accommodate this easily

mRNA vaccines are the most flexible imaginable, in the sense that all it is, is a string of letters (well, nucleotides) that encodes the protein of interest.

To make a vaccine against a mutation would be as simple as changing a letter in the code.

I imagine that, with time, such variants will become available. The technology is not the issue.

What would be an issue, is how the body reacts to the variant. Since these proteins are designed to provoke an immune response in the body, and because our immune systems are very complex, each new version would have to undergo clinical trials, to not only test how well they neutralize the (now mutant) virus, but also whether there are any inadvertant side effects.

IOW, it's a process. That takes time.