TUESDAY, Oct. 12, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Most pediatric solid organ transplant recipients (SOTRs) have a positive antibody response after receipt of two doses of the BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine, according to a letter to the editor published online Sept. 13 in the American Journal of Transplantation.
Caroline X. Qin, from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues recruited pediatric (12 to 18 years) SOTRs from April to August 2021; all 57 patients received the BNT162b2 vaccine. Samples were drawn one month before vaccination, two weeks after the first vaccine dose (post-V1), and one month after the second vaccine dose (post-V2) and were processed for antibodies against the spike protein receptor-binding domain.
The researchers found that 56.8 percent of the 37 patients with post-V1 titers and 73.3 percent of 45 with post-V2 titers had positive antibody titers, with median antibody titers of 98.7 and 1,876 U/mL, respectively. For the 30 patients with both serologies available, 46.7 percent had positive titers after both, 33.3 percent had a negative titer that became positive, and 16.7 had negative titers after both. For those who had positive titers after both, there was an increase noted in the median antibody titer, from 133 U/mL post-V1 to 2,500 U/mL post-V2. One patient had a positive titer post-V1 that became negative post-V2. Factors associated with negative post-V2 response included having received a transplant within the previous three years, multiple immunosuppressive agents, and antimetabolite immunosuppression.
"These findings suggest that pediatric SOTRs may be able to mount more robust immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination," the authors write.
Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
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