What advances in Covid vaccines are on the horizon?

Sasha

Sasha

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I've been asking on another thread about the implications of being treated with immunosuppressing drugs if @Jonathan Edwards's ideas about the mechanism of ME/CFS are correct and these are the drugs that we end up on.

In a world of endemic Covid, being immunosuppressed will presumably be an issue.

I asked what was happening to RA patients on rituximab:

Jonathan Edwards said:
Patients get rituximab either once every 6 months or once a year, depending on needs - a few go for up to five years between shots.

But the immunosuppressive effect may not be trivial. We did not run into problems until Covid. The problem with Covid is that it seems that people do not produce very good long term immunity, even after vaccination. It is difficult to know whether RA patients ran into trouble with Covid because of their RA or the rituximab though.
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I'd like to know what sort of future we might be facing. What are the chances of a vaccine being developed that gives long-term immunity to Covid? Is anything in the pipeline? Are there labs that are pursuing this work?
 
I’m aware of work on nasal vaccines, there was some hope they’d help reduce transmission. And I’d hope those of us unable to use current covid vaccines may be able to use them, but it’s all speculation.

I don’t know if we understand enough about the long term immunity issues or the negative reactions some have to be able to solve them. Adding on speculation about what treatments may potentially be suitable for people with ME seems to put us in speculation upon speculation… So I understand wanting to have answers, but I’m not sure we even have the right questions yet.
 
No one knows if Daratumumab (for example) needs to be re-dosed for your entire life—you may be done after a year. Current dosing schedule at Bergen is 0 2 4 and 24 and 26 weeks. This may be enough for permanent re-set for some but maybe not for others.
 
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hotblack said:
I’m aware of work on nasal vaccines, there was some hope they’d help reduce transmission. And I’d hope those of us unable to use current covid vaccines may be able to use them, but it’s all speculation.
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I'd been hearing about that work a few years ago, and it seemed to be a real mixed bag in terms of opinions about how effective they would be. Does anyone have a sense of how promising they are, even conceptually? I thought they were already in use in some countries but I haven't followed the stories at all. My impression is that they'd reduce transmission but not given longer-lasting immunity.

In my ignorance I'm assuming that long-lasting immunity would come for a vaccine that tackled some identifier-molecule(s) or somesuch on Covid that never changes. Is such work ongoing?

I don’t know if we understand enough about the long term immunity issues or the negative reactions some have to be able to solve them. Adding on speculation about what treatments may potentially be suitable for people with ME seems to put us in speculation upon speculation… So I understand wanting to have answers, but I’m not sure we even have the right questions yet.
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I think that some novel health issues that I've had may have been vaccine-related but if I knew that a vaccine would give me long-term immunity from Covid, I'd probably take the risk. I agree that there are all sorts of things we need to know, but I suggest we park the issue of negative reactions for now (or discuss them on another thread).
 
There has been very little use of paxlovid in the UK. If we do not have a vaccine that is longer lasting with a good safety profile, why are we not pursuing treatments for the disease?
 
But if you're meaningfully immune suppressed, vaccines don't necessarily help much. They rely on an adequate immune response to work.

(I say meaningfully because it's possible to be technically immune suppressed, as in having consistently low counts of certain white cells, yet have no difficulty seeing off common bugs. I tick that box.)

The only way forward would be to prevent transmission in the first place, which means treating everyone. With some contagious diseases there's an argument for exposing everyone to the risks of vaccination, but usually only in extraordinary circumstances or where vaccination offers long term immunity. The latter's not likely with 'flu and Covid because they develop new mutations every few months.
 
The other thing is that the susceptibility of people with ME/CFS to infections like Covid probably has nothing to do with immune suppression.

It's that infection makes some people's ME/CFS symptoms a lot worse, sometimes for a very long time. If they're in treatment for ME/CFS and that treatment has a decent chance of success, it's a different set of risks.

In any case, even if they don't tend to get floored by respiratory infections, the treatment might make them feel rubbish at first. But people can put up with quite a lot of hideousness if it's likely to give them a much better quality of life in the long term.
 
Sasha said:
I've been asking on another thread about the implications of being treated with immunosuppressing drugs if @Jonathan Edwards's ideas about the mechanism of ME/CFS are correct and these are the drugs that we end up on.
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I managed to get a prescription for cyclosporin (strong immunosuppressant). It had no effect on my ME symptoms. If we need immunomodulators, I think we might need one that blocks a very specific pathway, rather than full immune suppression.

I rarely got significant viral infection symptoms even before ME, and that hasn't changed with ME, so I don't think ME involves a body-wide dysfunction of our immune systems. I think it's way too early to worry about being prescribed immunosuppressants.
 
Wasn't there some work published in the last 6-12 months showing that the additional benefit of updated vaccinations for Covid was becoming less with each generation of vaccine? Something about the immune response was becoming less and fading faster?

Don't know if that is normal pattern for rapidly evolving infectious diseases like Covid or flu that require frequent re-vaccination. Or it is something particular to Covid.

Also does not necessarily mean the updated vaccinations are not worth getting. I still get mine when they become available.
 
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