Moderna vaccine provides immunity from coronavirus for at least 3 months, says study

Moderna vaccine provides immunity from coronavirus for at least 3 months, says study

Anew study has revealed that the Moderna coronavirus vaccine can provide immunity from coronavirus for at least three months. The American Pharma giant Moderna Inc had recently said that its Covid-19 vaccine demonstrated to have 94.1 percent efficacy.

According to the study by National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Moderna vaccine causes the human immune system to produce potent antibodies that endure for at least three months.

Researchers at the NIAID, which co-developed the drug, studied the immune response of 34 adult participants, young and old, from the first stage of a clinical trial. The vaccine, called mRNA-1273, is administered in two injections given 28 days apart.

In the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the immunogenicity data 119 days after the first dose and 90 days after the second vaccination showed that mRNA-1273 produced high levels of binding and neutralising antibodies at the 100g dose.

Even though the number of antibodies in the study subjects faded over time, it is not necessarily a cause for concern, said a report in News18 quoting AFP.

Texas A&M University-Texarkana virologist Benjamin Neuman was quoted by AFP as saying,“Positives from the study include evidence that a relatively strong antibody response remains 90 days after the second dose of the vaccine.

“The amount of vaccine-produced antibodies was higher in younger patients than in older patients, but reasonably strong immune responses were still seen even in patients up to 70 years of age.”

Encouragingly, the study showed that the vaccine activated a certain type of immune cell that should help out in the so-called memory response, but only longer term study will confirm if this will really be the case, said the report.

As per the report, NIAID director Anthony Fauci and other experts have said it is very likely that the immune system will remember the virus if re-exposed later on, and then produce new antibodies.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee will review the vaccine on 17 December.

Like another vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech, it is based on a new technology that uses genetic material in the form of mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid).

The mRNA is encased in a lipid molecule and injected into the arm, where it causes cells inside our muscles to build a surface protein of the coronavirus, said the report.

This tricks the immune system into believing it’s been infected with a microbe, and trains it to build the right kind of antibodies for when it encounters the real virus.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *