Covid19 vaccination for solid organ transplant recipients During a recent meeting of the NHS Blood & Transplant Research Unit a question from the Public and Patient Research Panel relating to the efcacy of the COVID 19 vaccine in tranplant patients was raised. Professor Andrew Fisher, Dean of Clinical Medicine and Professor of Respiratory Transplant Medicine, Newcastle University kindly responded and has given permission to share his reply here: Dear members of the BTRU PPRP, I can completely understand why this issue is of great concern to you and all other people who are immunosuppressed after organ transplantation and their family and carers. As a Consultant looking after people who are extremely clinically vulnerable both before and after transplant then it’s a very important issue to me too. It would be good to have more denite information to share with you that answers your questions but unfortunately this is not available yet but is being collected by research studies going on around the globe as we speak. The challenge is that we are learning more about the virus, the illness it causes and what protection vaccines give in real time as we all live through this pandemic. The positive news is that lots of research is going on looking at vaccine efcacy in high risk groups around the world including the UK through the OCTAVE study. We know more now about how effective the vaccines are from observational studies done from the government vaccine programmes in the NHS and from around the world than we did from the clinical trials that led to the vaccines being licenced. As patients on immunosuppression were excluded from the vaccine clinical trials it is going to be the real world observational research that gives us the answers. A new joint statement on COVID vaccines in solid organ transplant patients was released just a few days ago on 19th May from all the major specialist transplant organisations. I have attached it for your information. (See pages 18 & 19) The key messages are as follows: The response to all types of vaccines, not just COVID-19 in people on immunosuppressants after transplant is reduced compared to those not on immunosuppressants – this is because these are two competing treatments – vaccines are designed to boost your immune system against a specic threat whereas the immunosuppressants are trying to dampen your immune system to prevent rejection. The immunosuppressants are not selective and dampen your body’s response to vaccines as well. Just measuring antibodies in the blood that have developed after vaccination is a very imprecise way of showing whether there will be protection. There are other things such as LIVErNEWS No. 75
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