COVID-19: vaccines and infections

Personalized, precise and predictive vaccinology's holy grail is to anticipate immune response for every individual, depending on their genetic background and all other factors that may impact vaccine immunogenicity, efficacy, and safety.

The high expense of comprehensive genomic and immune-profiling tests, however, prohibits their routine use and this disproportionally affects underserved populations.

A new paper reports preliminary results of an ongoing study of COVID-19 vaccination in geographic neighborhoods and online health support groups. Due to innovative recruitment and monitoring strategies, the study has the largest representation of active "oldest old" - individuals aged 80 or older - than all other trials with diverse age groups. 

Despite widespread belief of a biphasic pattern for the frequency of systemic adverse events post-vaccination (VAEs), the paper reports statistically significant differences in the incidence of VAEs for both younger and 80+ populations when compared to those in the 60-69 and 70-79 age brackets. The subtypes of adverse events in younger and older populations are different. This short paper groups post-vaccination events in three types: "No or minimal VAEs", and short- or long-term reactions that significantly impacted activities of daily living.    

The paper suggests genetic origin for some adverse reactions. Scientists have only just begun to look into genetics of less common VAEs. HLA-A∗03:01 (contributing to low risk of severe COVID-19) was recently found to be associated with increased risk of stronger side effects (including fever and chills) from Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination. In another recent study, HLA-DQB1*06 alleles were found to protect from breakthrough infection during the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 virus and subsequent Alpha-variant waves compared with non-carriers. Hopefully, more studies will follow. 

REFERENCE

Gabashvili IS. The Incidence and Effect of Adverse Events Due to COVID-19 Vaccines on Breakthrough Infections: Decentralized Observational Study With Underrepresented Groups. JMIR Form Res. 2022 Nov 4;6(11):e41914. doi: 10.2196/41914. PMID: 36309347.

Current Impact score of the journal is: 2.38 (Resurchify)

JMIR Formative Research has been accepted for the Web of Science: Emerging Sources Citation Index. The journal will receive a Journal Impact Factor in 2023. 

Resolving the subtypes of COVID-19 in the elderly

SARS-Cov-2 is one of the most complex viruses known to medical science. Patients with COVID-19 present a broad spectrum of clinical manifestations, ranging from asymptomatic infection to lethal outcome. Both the young and the old may have very different clusters of symptoms and responses to medications, including the COVID-19 vaccines.  Each type is associated with how severe of an illness a patient might experience, ranging from asymptomatic to lethal. 

Precision medicine approaches such as whole-exome sequencing can provide insight into the phenotypes, endotypes and underlying mechanisms of the disease. The high cost of cutting-edge approaches, however, keeps these tools out of reach for many research teams. 

In this age of big data and large clinical studies, we should not forget about the value of individual cases. A good case report tells a detailed story. It describes a unique phenotype and offers unique clues to its resolution into an endotype. 

A new systematic review of case reports aims to answer questions about COVID-19 subtypes in octogenarians, nonagenarians, and centenarians and offer possible solutions to organize the knowledge and identify the gaps. 

REFERENCE

Irene S. Gabashvili. The outcomes of COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection in octogenarians, nonagenarians, and centenarians. PROSPERO 2022 CRD42022332621 Available from: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42022332621

Irene S. Gabashvili (2022), “COVID-19 vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 in the oldest old: rapid literature review”, Mendeley Data, v1 http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/6sk33d9z7s.1 https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/6sk33d9z7s/1

Irene S. Gabashvili (2022), “The Outcomes of COVID-19 and Vaccination in the Oldest Old: a Longitudinal Observational Study and Literature Review”, April 2022, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15625.93285