According to a new study, both doses of the coronavirus vaccine are important for cancer patients to stimulate immune responses against the deadly virus.

For the study, the British examined 151 patients with cancer and 54 healthy control persons. All participants received the Covid-19 mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech).

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This vaccine requires two doses. The first few participants in this study were given the second dose 21 days after they had received the first dose. But in the midst of the study, the guidelines were changed by the health authorities and the remaining participants had to wait 12 weeks to receive their second dose.

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The team reported that among healthy control persons, the immune efficacy of the first dose was very high (97 per cent efficacious). By contrast, among patients with solid cancers, the immune efficacy of a single dose was strikingly low (39 per cent), and it was even lower in patients with haematologic cancers (13 per cent).

However, the second dose of vaccine significantly and rapidly increased the immune efficacy in patients with solid cancers (95 per cent within 2 weeks of receiving the second dose), the researchers noted in their study.

Study findings

The findings further suggested that 50 per cent of patients with haematologic cancers who had received the booster at day 21 were seropositive at five weeks, compared to only eight per cent of those who had not received the booster.

Senior author Sheeba Irshad, MD, senior clinical lecturer, King’s College London, said: “Our data provide the first real-world evidence of immune efficacy following one dose of the Pfizer vaccine in immunocompromised patient populations [and] clearly shows that the poor one-dose efficacy in cancer patients can be rescued with an early booster at day 21.”

“Based on our findings, we would recommend an urgent review of the vaccine strategy for clinically extremely vulnerable groups. Until then, it is important that cancer patients continue to observe all public health measures in places, such as social distancing and shielding when attending hospitals, even after vaccination,” Irshad added.

The findings of the study were published in the preprint server medRxiv . The study has not undergone peer review.

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