As per a new study, at least 95 percent of the people with cancer developed better immunity against the Covid 19 mRNA vaccines, three to four weeks after the second dose.
Patients Receiving Rituximab Therapy Did Not Develop Covid 19 Antibodies
The study is published in the journal Cancer Cell. It stated that among the 131 patients studied, 94 percent developed antibodies against Covid 19. However, the patients with high risk did not.
With other vaccines and infections, patients with cancer have been shown not to develop as robust an immune response as the general population,” said study senior co-author Ruben Mesa, MD, FACP, executive director of the Mays Cancer Center. “It made sense, therefore, to hypothesize that certain high-risk groups of patients do not have antibody response to COVID-19 vaccine.”
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Researcher Dimpy P. Shah from the University of Texas Health Science Centre at San Antonia said that they did find any antibodies against the virus in high-risk groups.
Patients who were receiving therapy called Rituximab within six months of vaccination showed no antibodies. Rituximab is a monoclonal antibody used in the treatment of hematological cancers and autoimmune diseases.
Dimpy Shah said that they don’t currently know how that it is related to Covid 19.
Pankil K. Shah from the Geneva University Hospital said that the patients with hematological malignancies, such as myeloma and Hodgkin lymphoma are less likely to respond to the vaccination than the ones who have solid tumors.
Mutants of Covid 19 Not Included in Study
As of now, the Delta variant and other mutants of the Covid 19 virus have not been included in the study. The team also did not analyze the response of the infection-fighting T cells and B cells in patients with cancer.
The average age of the patients in the study was 63. Around 106 patients had solid cancers and 25 patients had hematological malignancies (25).
