TUESDAY, May 21, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Powerful COVID vaccines could be setting people’s immune systems up to successfully fight off not just future COVID variants, but other types of coronaviruses as well, a new study shows. People repeatedly vaccinated for COVID -- the initial shots, followed by boosters and updated vaccines -- generate antibodies capable of neutralizing not just COVID variants, but even some distantly related coronaviruses, researchers reported May 17 in the journal Nature . It appears that periodic re-vaccination for COVID might cause people to gradually build up a stock of antibodies that protect them from a variety of coronaviruses, researchers concluded.
That runs counter to concerns that annual vaccinations against COVID might interfere with immune response in subsequent years, as happens with influenza jabs, researchers said. “The first vaccine an individual receives induces a strong primary immune response that shapes responses to subsequent infection and vaccination, an effect known as imprinting,” explained senior researcher Dr. Michael Diamond , a professor of medicine with the Washington University School of Medicine in St.
Louis. “In principle, imprinting can be positive, negative or neutral,” Diamond added in a university news release. “In this case, we see strong imprinting that is positive, because it’s coupled to the development of cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies with remarkable breadth of activity.
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