Study: Pfizer vaccine may be less effective with overweight people

Italian researchers have found that overweight healthcare workers produced only about half the amount of antibodies in response to a second dose of shock compared to healthy people. Although it is too early to know what this means to the efficiency of the vaccine, this may mean that overweight people need an additional dose of reinforcement to ensure that they are adequate protection of the Coronavirus, reports The Gurandian.

Previous surveys have suggested that the overweight determined to have a body mass index (BMI) over 30 ʹ increases the risk of David-19's death by nearly 50%, and increases the risk of hospital outcome by 113%.

Some of these may be because overweight people often have other basic medical conditions, such as heart disease or Type 2 that increase their risk of coronaryism, but excessive body fat can also cause metabolic changes, such as insulin resistance and inflammation, which make it more difficult for the body to fight infections.

This constant state of low-scale inflammation could also weaken certain immune responses, including those initiated by B and T cells that cause a defensive response after the vaccine. A special research has shown that flu vaccine is only half effective in overweight people compared to those with a healthy weight.

The new study, which has not yet been examined by colleagues, offers the first direct evidence that suggests a similar problem could happen with the Covid-19 vaccines.

Aldo Venuti, of the Institute Fisiorapisti Opstalier in Rome, and his colleagues praised the response of antibodies following two doses of Pfizer vaccines / BioNTech in 248 health care workers. Seven days after taking the second dose, 99.5% of them had developed a response to antibodies, and that response was greater than the one recorded in people who had been cured by Ovid-19. However, the answer was unclear in people who were overweight.

Because overweight is a major risk factor for disease and mortality for patients with Cavido-19, it is imperative to plan an efficient vaccine programme in this subgroup,” wrote Aldo and his colleagues. “Although further research is needed, this data may have important implications in developing vaccine strategies for Covid-19, especially in the thick people. If our data were confirmed by larger studies, giving the fat people an extra dose of the vaccine, or a higher dose could be the options to appreciate it. ”

We always knew that BMI was an extraordinary forecast of the poor immune response to vaccines, so this paper is obviously interesting, although it is based on a very small precautionary database”, said Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College in London. “It confirms that having a vaccinated population is not synonymous with having an immune population, especially in a high-weight country, and stresses the vital need for long-term immune monitoring programmes. ”

In a special study of Brazilian healthcare workers Altmann and his colleagues showed that reinfectation with Sars- The CoV-2 was also more common among people with a high BMI and that they tended to have lower responses to antibodies to the original infection, reports The Guardian.