COVID-19 can be a serious infection that can lead to treatment in hospital or even death. We know from previous research that people who have a weakened immune system were more likely to catch COVID-19. The MELODY study aimed to find out how well vaccines protect people who have a weakened immune system from COVID-19. We invited people who have had transplants, people with certain types of blood cancer and people with rare autoimmune rheumatic disease to take part.
We found that about 4 in 5 people that took part in MELODY had had antibodies after having 3 or more vaccines. People who had more doses of vaccine were more likely to have antibodies.
We now know that most immunosuppressed people make antibodies after having a COVID-19 vaccine. We also know that the more vaccines you have, the more likely you are to have antibodies. Therefore, we recommend that people have vaccines and booster doses as offered by the UK vaccination programme.
The published paper and a commentary in Lancet Rheumatology can be found here:
Thanks for posting this zoe. I took part in the Melody study, and was pleased to record that I had antibodies. It certainly did give me more confidence when facing the world.
It is a useful starting point in that vaccinations help the immunosuppressed. My big gripe about many studies is they are not holistic enough and in many cases with very small sample size compared with the population.
Regarding Vasculitis I would like to see a large scale holistic study looking people's condition in particular, general health, medications, vaccinations, environment, life style, diet etc to see if there are any predictors and clear pathways to long term stable remission.
The other gripe is that these studies are funded by the pharmaceutical companies that benefit from from certain results. I was part of the melody study (being both transplant recipient and having vasculitis) and after having having 4 vaccines, I still had no antibodies. The only time during the study when I was positive for antibodies was a few weeks after I actually had covid. So Pfizer (one of the companies funding this study) could truthfully say that I had produced antibodies after 4 vaccines, even though it was catching covid that most likely made my immune system respond rather than the multiple vaccines.
Hi Zoe69. That’s good news, I don’t think any of us ever thought about not having the vaccine but it’s nice to know that 80% of us have something to protect us. Nick.
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