Kidney transplant recipients are still vulnerable to COVID-19 after vaccination | Washington Examiner

KDisease experts warn that recipients of iDNES.cz transplants are at increased risk of serious coronavirus disease, even after being fully vaccinated.

“What we are telling patients now is, unfortunately, everything we had to do early on: wearing a mask, social distance, special to keep washing our hands. It means that you need to take preventive measures. Because there is almost no protection. [against COVID-19]”. Mike Spiggler, vice president of patient services at the US Kidney Foundation, said.

Transplant recipients need to take immunosuppressive drugs to fend off attacks from their immune system on the transplanted organs, resulting in an overall ability to fight infections with COVID-19 and other viruses. It weakens to.Johns Hopkins University Surgeon report Earlier this month, nearly all of the 658 organ transplant recipients surveyed who received both coronavirus vaccines received little or no antibody response, which means they are still at high risk of severe infection. ..

Fully vaccinated people do not need to wear masks indoors, CDC says

“Although the threshold for protective immunity has not been established, antibody levels were well below those observed in immunocompetents,” the report author said.

Over 60% of adults in the United States have already been vaccinated at least once, and about 48% are fully vaccinated. according to To the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC Lifted National masking recommendations for fully vaccinated people last week. This means that you received a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, or both the Pfizer vaccine or the Modana vaccine. While vaccination rates are rising and new case rates are declining, proponents of kidney disease education say that organ recipients with a weakened immune system until the majority of the U.S. population is vaccinated. It warns that you should continue to wear the mask.

“We need more guidance from the CDC,” Spiggler said. “Current CDC guidance … talks about immunocompromised patients and says that they should actually take the same precautions — social distance, wearing masks.”

According to Paul Palevsky, president of the National Kidney Foundation, immunodeficiency patients may not respond to vaccination as much as people with a fully functional immune system, so kidney disease experts have seen this come. It was. Special populations, such as transplant recipients, cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, and others with weakened immune responses, were underestimated in clinical trials.Infectious disease experts now expect to need these particular populations Booster shot..

“The initially expected efficacy will be lower in patients with kidney disease, immunosuppression, and transplants, but there are still some benefits,” Palevsky said. “But we believe that transplant patients … and patients with kidney disease or immunosuppression should remain socially distant until they receive very high levels of vaccination in the general population.”

COVID-19 pediatric hospitalization is likely to be overestimated, Stanford University researchers report

Doctors are still recommending vaccination if possible, knowing that the partial level of protection provided by vaccination is better than nothing. Scientists do not know exactly what percentage of the population must recover from vaccination or infection in order to eliminate the spread of the community, a threshold known as herd immunity. According to Palevsky, everyone has a “social commitment” to take shots until the United States reaches its elusive threshold.

Click here to read more about the Washington Examiner

“If it’s not for you, get vaccinated to protect a 2-year-old who lives next door with leukemia, or someone who lives across the street, with a kidney transplant.” Is a very important message and I don’t think it can be emphasized enough. “

Original location: Kidney transplant recipients are still vulnerable to COVID-19 after vaccination