mRNA vaccination in people over 80 years of age induces strong humoral immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 with cross neutralisation of P.1 Brazilian variant
- University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
- Quinton and Harborne PCN, United Kingdom
- Vaccine Taskforce, United Kingdom
- National infection Service, United Kingdom
- National Infection Service, United Kingdom
- Oxford Immunotec Ltd, United Kingdom
Abstract
Age is the major risk factor for mortality after SARS-CoV-2 infection and older people have received priority consideration for COVID-19 vaccination. However vaccine responses are often suboptimal in this age group and few people over the age of 80 years were included in vaccine registration trials. We determined the serological and cellular response to spike protein in 100 people aged 80-96 years at 2 weeks after second vaccination with the Pfizer BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. Antibody responses were seen in every donor with high titres in 98%. Spike-specific cellular immune responses were detectable in only 63% and correlated with humoral response. Previous SARS-CoV-2 infection substantially increased antibody responses after one vaccine and antibody and cellular responses remained 28-fold and 3-fold higher respectively after dual vaccination. Post-vaccine sera mediated strong neutralisation of live Victoria infection and although neutralisation titres were reduced 14-fold against the P.1 variant first discovered in Brazil they remained largely effective. These data demonstrate that the mRNA vaccine platform delivers strong humoral immunity in people up to 96 years of age and retains broad efficacy against the P.1 Variant of Concern.
Data availability
All primary data are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4740081
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Core Studies (Immunity programme)
- Helen Parry
- Gokhan Tut
- Rachel Bruton
- Sian Faustini
- Christine Stephens
- Paul Moss
UK Coronavirus Immunology Consortium (UKRI/DHSC)
- Helen Parry
- Gokhan Tut
- Rachel Bruton
- Sian Faustini
- Christine Stephens
- Paul Moss
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Jos W Van der Meer, Radboud University Medical Centre, Netherlands
Ethics
Human subjects: Informed consent, and consent to publish, was obtained. The study was approved by UPH IRAS ethics 282164, Health Research Authority UK.
Version history
- Received: April 13, 2021
- Accepted: September 24, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: September 29, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: October 8, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2021, Parry et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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mRNA vaccination in people over 80 years of age induces strong humoral immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 with cross neutralisation of P.1 Brazilian variant
eLife 10:e69375.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.69375
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