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from the that's-the-USA-and-Europe-stuffed dept.
COVID-19 Vaccines May Be Significantly Less Effective in People With Severe Obesity:
New research suggests that adults (aged 18 or older) with severe obesity generate a significantly weaker immune response to vaccination compared to those with normal weight. The study was conducted by Professor Volkan Demirhan Yumuk from Istanbul University in Turkey and colleagues and was presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Maastricht, Netherlands (May 4-7).
The study also found that people with severe obesity (BMI of more than 40kg/m2) vaccinated with Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine generated significantly more antibodies than those vaccinated with CoronaVac (inactivated SARS–CoV–2) vaccine, suggesting that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine might be a better choice for this vulnerable population.
Obesity is a disease complicating the course of COVID-19, and the vaccine antibody response in adults with obesity may be compromised. Vaccines against influenza, hepatitis B, and rabies, have shown reduced responses in people with obesity.
To find out more, researchers investigated antibody responses following Pfizer/BioNTech and CoronaVac vaccination in 124 adults (average age 42-63 years) with severe obesity who visited the Obesity Center at Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty Hospitals, between August and November 2021. They also recruited a control group of 166 normal weight adults (BMI less than 25kg/m2, average age 39-47 years) who were visiting the Cerrahpasa Hospitals Vaccination Unit.
Researchers measured antibody levels in blood samples taken from patients and normal weight controls who had received two doses of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or CoronaVac vaccine and had their second dose four weeks earlier. The participants were classified by infection history as either previously having COVID-19 or not (confirmed by their antibody profile).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 11 2022, @04:54AM
In the pharmaceutical field it's well known that body weight and percentage of body weight as adipose tissue can affect the dosing for a variety of different drugs.
The crux of the question here is the "volume of distribution," which is an idealized ratio that describes how well a given drug distributes into the various tissues of the body. Higher Vd generally means the body's squishier and solid-er parts are better at taking the drug in than lower Vd, which usually implies the drug stays mostly in the circulation and filtration/processing pathways (liver and kidneys). This factor is also affected by the lipophilicity of the drug in question, i.e., how likely it is to segregate into adipose tissue. Many drugs with low Vd are dosed by ideal body weight, which is a guess at the patient's *lean* body mass rather than their total heft, or IBW plus some fudge factor, since even adipose tissue has some vascularization...
Now, how this relates to the vaccines is probably a lot more complicated, since the "dose" as it were is amplified by the body and THAT depends on a whole lot of other factors. High adipose tissue volume is well-known to be inflammatory though.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...