Prior infection with SARS-CoV-2 boosts and broadens Ad26.COV2.S immunogenicity in a variant-dependent manner
- Journal:
- Cell Host & Microbe
- Published:
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.chom.2021.10.003
- Affiliations:
- 19
- Authors:
- 35
Research Highlight
Prior COVID-19 infection may boost vaccine effectiveness
© Andriy Onufriyenko/Moment/Getty Images
Contracting COVID-19 prior to vaccination may boost the immune system’s ability to fight off future infection even by a different variant, according to a new study.
Most of the successive waves of COVID-19 infection that have swept the world were triggered by new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This has meant that vaccine manufacturers are faced with a moving target, and it wasn’t clear how effective vaccines made for earlier variants of the virus would be against new ones.
Now, a team led by researchers at the University of Cape Town in South Africa has found that vaccination after infection with an earlier variant appeared to offer enhanced protection against subsequent variants, mainly though the production of antibodies, but also through T cell responses.
They also found that this boost does not depend on the time between infection and vaccination.
References
- Cell Host & Microbe 29, 1611–1619 (2021). doi: 10.1016/j.chom.2021.10.003