Coronavirus infections that occur in vaccinated people - so-called "breakthroughs" because they escape the immune system - then significantly improve the body's immune response to various variants of the virus, according to US scientists.
The small laboratory study found that the antibodies in the blood samples of those who were subsequently infected with the coronavirus were both much higher in number and more effective in terms of their ability to neutralize the coronavirus (up to 1.000%) than the antibodies they had. created two weeks after the second dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
The researchers, led by Assistant Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Fikantu Tafese of the Oregon University School of Medicine and Science, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). after vaccination - in fact - it strengthens the immune system's response in subsequent exposures even to new variants (which probably also applies to Omicron).
The study, which compared blood samples from 52 people with a mean age of 38 years who had all been vaccinated with Pfizer / BioNTech and half of whom (26) subsequently had a mild infection Covid-19 (ten due to Delta variant), shows that a vaccinated infection generates a strong immune response to Delta and this "response" can be highly effective against other variants.
"No one can have a better immune response than that. Our study shows that people who are vaccinated and then exposed to a breakthrough infection acquire "super" immunity. "Although we did not specifically look at the Omicron variant, based on the results of our study, we expect that breakthrough infections due to Omicron will elicit an equally strong immune response among those vaccinated," said Dr. Tafese.
"Once someone is vaccinated and then exposed to the virus, they are likely to have a reasonably good protection against future variants. "The end result will be a gradual weakening of the severity of the global pandemic," said Marcel Curlin, an associate professor of infectious disease at the same university.