![](https://i.imgur.com/CLvY2jA.png")
14-01-2023, 12:16 PM
Two papers and a commentary from prominent scientists published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday offer evidence that the quickly-developed bivalent COVID vaccine boosters from Pfizer and Moderna may not be much better than the original monovalent mRNA boosters at preventing coronavirus infection.
“Boosting with new bivalent mRNA vaccines targeting both the BA.4/BA.5 variant and the D614G strain did not elicit a discernibly superior virus-neutralizing peak antibody response as compared with boosting with the original monovalent vaccines,” a research team led by David Ho at Columbia University wrote of their pseudovirus study.
Another study found that both the monovalent and bivalent boosters “markedly increased antibody responses” but did a better job neutralizing ancestral strains of the coronavirus — for which the vaccines were originally developed — than the more recent BA.5 omicron descendent.
All told, wrote the team at the Dan Barouch Lab at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, “the median BA.5 neutralizing antibody titer was similar after monovalent and bivalent mRNA boosting, with a modest trend favoring the bivalent booster by a factor of 1.3.”
The researchers also found that neither monovalent nor bivalent boosters substantially augmented immune response from the foundational T-cells that fight off infection in tandem with antibodies.
They are not a panacea, by any means — their efficacy against infections is limited and of short duration, which has been the case for shots since the omicron variant came along in late 2021.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/artic...712047.php
“Boosting with new bivalent mRNA vaccines targeting both the BA.4/BA.5 variant and the D614G strain did not elicit a discernibly superior virus-neutralizing peak antibody response as compared with boosting with the original monovalent vaccines,” a research team led by David Ho at Columbia University wrote of their pseudovirus study.
Another study found that both the monovalent and bivalent boosters “markedly increased antibody responses” but did a better job neutralizing ancestral strains of the coronavirus — for which the vaccines were originally developed — than the more recent BA.5 omicron descendent.
All told, wrote the team at the Dan Barouch Lab at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, “the median BA.5 neutralizing antibody titer was similar after monovalent and bivalent mRNA boosting, with a modest trend favoring the bivalent booster by a factor of 1.3.”
The researchers also found that neither monovalent nor bivalent boosters substantially augmented immune response from the foundational T-cells that fight off infection in tandem with antibodies.
They are not a panacea, by any means — their efficacy against infections is limited and of short duration, which has been the case for shots since the omicron variant came along in late 2021.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/artic...712047.php
