New research backs up the advice often given to everyone who's been vaccinated against the coronavirus to get a booster—any booster. A British study compared the effectiveness of seven brands of coronavirus vaccines administered as booster shots to 2,878 people who'd already had two doses of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer products. Four weeks later, blood samples showed increased levels of antibodies and immune cells in the volunteers who'd been given any of the COVID vaccines, as opposed to the control group that had been given a meningitis vaccine, the New York Times reports.
The results varied, though. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines made the biggest differences as boosters. A Valneva booster following up a Pfizer vaccine brought an increase in antibodies and T cells of 30% over the control group's, while a Moderna booster resulted in a jump of at least 1,000%. It's possible that other brands used in the study just take longer to build immunity, per the Washington Post. The study used five vaccines as boosters that are authorized somewhere: Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax, and Pfizer. CureVac and Valneva products that have not been authorized anywhere also were given. The study was published Thursday in the Lancet.
"The most significant take-home message here is that there are a large number of excellent boosting options for third doses," said an Oxford University statistician who did not work on the study. Side effects were not a problem among the volunteers. There was no finding about effectiveness against the omicron variant; it might be able to get around the antibodies current vaccines produce. The infectious disease expert who led the study said the Pfizer dose, an mRNA vaccine, could work well as a booster in just a half-dose. That would mean "we might be able to boost more people with the same amount of vaccines in the future," Saul Faust said. (More COVID booster shots stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
