Do patients with cancer need to have their 3rd shot of vaccine?

For Esther Jones, a dialysis nurse-patient the third dose of covid vaccine was a charm. The first two doses of Pfizer-biotech were a failure because her blood tests revealed that not enough antibodies were produced by her immune system and it was lower than what would be detected in healthy people. She has received the fourth dose hoping for a better response.

Ms. Jones a 45 years old woman had a kidney transplant years ago. To prevent rejection of the organ, she had been taking drugs to suppress her immune system ever since. With this observation, she’s been looking to test the utility of a third dose in people with a weakened immune system.

Since April, health care providers in France have routinely given the third dose of a two-dose vaccine to people with certain immune conditions. The number of organ transplant recipients who had antibodies increased to 68 percent four weeks after the third dose from 40 percent after the second dose, one team of French researchers recently reported. This shows that the 3^rd dose worked and helped these people to have a reasonable amount of antibodies. The scientists found that a third dose amped up antibody levels in some organ transplant recipients who had low or undetectable levels of antibodies.

“It takes time, unfortunately, especially as a government agency,” said Emily Ricotta, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We have to go through a lot of regulatory and approval processes to do these sorts of projects.”

Resource