A combination of vaccination and naturally acquired infection appears to boost the production of maximally potent antibodies against the COVID-19 virus, new UCLA research finds.
A combination of vaccination and naturally acquired infection appears to boost the production of maximally potent antibodies against the COVID-19 virus, new UCLA research finds.
The findings, published today in the peer-reviewed journal mBio, raise the possibility that vaccine boosters may be equally effective in improving antibodies’ ability to target multiple variants of the virus, including the delta variant, which is now the predominant strain, and the recently detected omicron variant. (The study was conducted prior to the emergence of delta and omicron, but Dr. Otto Yang, the study’s senior author, said the results could potentially apply to those and other new variants.)
“The main message from our research is that someone who has had COVID and then gets vaccinated develops not only a boost in antibody amount, but also improved antibody quality — enhancing the ability of antibodies to act against variants,” said Yang, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases and of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “This suggests that having repeated exposures to the spike protein allows the immune system to continue improving the antibodies if someone had COVID then been vaccinated.”
Read more at University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences
Image: “The main message from our research is that someone who has had COVID and then gets vaccinated develops not only a boost in antibody amount, but also improved antibody quality,” said UCLA’s Dr. Otto Yang. (Credit: Aleya Spielman/UCLA Health)
