Research suggests Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine reprograms innate immune responses

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Researchers in The Netherlands and Germany have warned that Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine induces complex reprogramming of innate immune responses that should be considered in the development and use of mRNA-based vaccines.

Jorge Domínguez-Andrés and colleagues say that while the vaccine has been shown to be up to 95% effective† in preventing infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and subsequent COVID-19, little is known about the broad effects the vaccine may have on the innate and adaptive immune responses.

(UNDERCURRENTS: † The Mayo Clinic and Cambridge-based biotech company nference, in a study, found that both mRNA COVID-19 vaccines’ effectiveness dropped in the month of July. The researchers, while saying the vaccines provided good protection against the virus, found that Moderna’s vaccine effectiveness was 76 percent, as compared with Pfizer’s 42 percent. Source: The Epoch Times.)

In the current study (not peer-reviewed*), the research team from Radboud University Medical Center and Erasmus MC in the Netherlands, and the Helmholtz-Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Hannover Medical School (MHH), and the University of Bonn, in Germany, confirmed the efficacy of BNT162b2 vaccination at inducing effective humoral and cellular immunity against several SARS-CoV-2 variants. Study: The BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 reprograms both adaptive and innate immune responses.

However, they also showed that the vaccine altered the production of inflammatory cytokines by innate immune cells following stimulation with both specific (SARS-CoV-2) and non-specific (viral, fungal and bacterial) stimuli.

Following vaccination, innate immune cells had a reduced response to toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), TLR7 and TLR8 – all ligands that play an important role in the immune response to viral infection.

Neta and colleagues also found that cytokine responses to fungi were increased following vaccination.