The popular Pfizer-BioNtech coronavirus vaccine may be less effective on people suffering from obesity, a new study has revealed.
A group of Italian researchers have discovered that the health care workers who received the Pfizer vaccine, and who are obese, could not produce as many antibodies as the other healthy healthcare workers.
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Obesity health care workers were only able to produce half as many antibodies after the second injection of the Pfizer vaccine, compared to the healthy ones.
Although the study is continuing and the researchers feel that it is too early to raise questions about the effectiveness of the popular vaccine, this study may conclude that people who are obese have an increased dose of the vaccine to ensure safety against the deadly coronavirus.
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This comes after an earlier study suggested that obesity can increase the risk of dying from coronavirus by nearly 50 percent, and also the risk of hospitalization by 113 percent.
Aldo Venuti, from the Istituti Fisioterapici Ospitalieri in Rome, worked at a sample group of nearly 248 health care workers and evaluated the data to reach this conclusion.
According to their study, 99.5 percent of those health care workers had developed an antibody response seven days after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. This response was also greater than those who had received COVID-19 but it was not the same in those who were depressed and obese.
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“Because obesity is a major risk factor for morbidity and mortality for patients with Covid-19, it is imperative to design an effective vaccination program in this subgroup,” Venuti said. “Although more studies are needed, these data may have a significant impact on the development of vaccination strategies for Covid-19, especially in obese people. If our data were to be confirmed by studies more, giving an extra dose of the vaccine to obese people or a higher dose could be options for being evaluated in this population. “
However, this study is not accepted as it is due to its limited sample size. “We always knew that BMI was a major predictor of a poor immune response to vaccines, so this paper is certainly interesting, even though it is based on too small a data set,” said Danny Altmann, senior -immunology professor at Imperial College London with the Defendant. “It confirms that the vaccine population is not equal to the immune population, especially in a country with high obesity, and underlines the essential need for long-term immunization monitoring programs.”