Covid vaccines with mRna shield products, such as Pfizer and Moderna, appear to be capable of inducing “a persistent response of germinal center B cells, which allows for the generation of robust humoral immunity”. This is what a team of scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, USA writes, in a study published in ‘Nature’ and enthusiastically received by the scientific community. Put simply, the message from the authors of the work is that the reaction aroused by these vaccines in the body could protect against the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus for years, if this pathogen with its variants does not evolve much beyond its form. of today.
And therefore, as also highlighted by Italian scientists, such as the immunologist Mario Clerici, “it is not certain that recalls of the Covid vaccine will be needed every year”. The authors of the study, which rebounded in the international press, looked at antigen-specific B cell responses in both peripheral blood and draining lymph nodes of 14 people vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer. What they found is that the response that is generated appears to be persistent. It is as if vaccination endows us with ‘factories’ of long-lasting plasma cells and B cells. The publication of this work in ‘Nature’ is a confirmation of the expectations that various scientists have cultivated on the basis of other data that emerged from previous studies.
According to the New York Times, one of the authors, the immunologist Ali Ellebedy, defines what was observed in the analysis just published “a good sign of how long the immunity induced by these vaccines is”. “The data” of this study, says Adnkronos Salute Clerici, who is a professor at the University of Milan and scientific director of the Don Gnocchi Foundation, “confirm that from an immunological point of view there is nothing peculiar about this. virus”.
“The expectation is that the vaccine-induced response will last a very long time,” continues Clerici. The expert, speaking of the evidence that was accumulating on immunological memory, had used an example to convey the idea of the mechanism that could be activated in our organism: “It is as if we had a cannon that fires its bullets only if there is the virus. In its absence this cannon stands there ready and when the virus should reappear it would have the machinery to produce them “.
Clerici also cites another published work, which tells us how “the immune response induced by Sars-CoV-2 vaccines (in monkeys) also protects against other coronaviruses”.