Reduced COVID-19 Vaccine Response in Patients Treated with Biologic Therapies for Asthma

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Martin C. Runnstrom, Emory University; Andrea Morrison-Porter, Emory University; Mayuran Ravindran, Emory University; Hannah Quehl, Emory University; Richard Ramonell, Emory University; Matthew Woodruff, Emory University; Rahulkumar Patel, Emory University; Caroline Kim, Emory University; Natalie S. Haddad, Emory University; Frances Eun-Hyung Lee, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2022-05-15
• Publisher: AMER THORACIC SOC
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2022 by the American Thoracic Society
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1164/rccm.202111-2496LE
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: AMERICAN JOURNAL OF RESPIRATORY AND CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE
• Volume: 205
• Issue: 10
• Start Page: 1243
• End Page: 1245
• Grant/Funding Information: Supported by NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: P01AI125180-01, P01A1078907, U54CA260563, R01AI121252, 1U01AI141993, and 5T32HL116271-09.
• Keywords: Critical Care Medicine; ANTIBODY; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; INFLUENZA VACCINATION; Science & Technology; CELLS; General & Internal Medicine; Respiratory System
• Research Categories: Health Sciences, Immunology; Biology, Cell

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines confer great protection against symptomatic and severe coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in healthy adults, but little is known for specialized patient populations despite billions of doses given worldwide. Asthma is one of the most common chronic respiratory diseases and affects approximately 25 million people in the United States alone. There are currently six U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved biologic therapies for the treatment of asthma, with some that target cytokines critical for asthma pathogenesis, but inhibition of these cytokines may also negatively affect B cell to plasma cell differentiation, somatic hypermutation in the germinal centers, and long-lived plasma cell generation and maintenance potentially through eosinophil depletion (1–3). Despite animal studies showing decreased vaccine-induced humoral immunity without these cytokines (4, 5), there is a paucity of literature available in this patient population following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.