My mother is immunocompromised, so we’ve discussed this with 4 doctors who specialize in assessing immuno-affecting conditions.
3⁄4 felt that the information gain from doing this would be negligible. 2 of those 3 have generally had strong epistemics during her treatment. The fourth (who has generally been least impressive, but sounded like she maybe had a good idea on this?), thought it may be mildly useful.
I’m a bit surprised by this. The entire logic behind booster doses for the immunocompromised (which several countries are already doing, e.g. US/UK) is based on a lack of (or low) immune response to the vaccine, which can be confirmed by an antibody test (measuring antibodies to the spike protein). There are studies with large numbers of people where you can see the median levels of antibodies in healthy adults and compare results (e.g. here and here). These tests are quantitative and give you a number, not just a positive or negative result, some people can have orders of magnitude more antibodies than others as a result of vaccination.
Also my impression is that antibody levels (post vaccination) are possibly correlated or even predict who can be infected and correlate with vaccine effectiveness. Is that not likely to be the case?
This is a bit anecdotal but I’ve read about people in the UK on immunosuppressive therapy getting 4 vaccine doses (as advised by their doctor) in order to generate enough immune response to have detectable antibodies.
My mother is immunocompromised, so we’ve discussed this with 4 doctors who specialize in assessing immuno-affecting conditions.
3⁄4 felt that the information gain from doing this would be negligible. 2 of those 3 have generally had strong epistemics during her treatment. The fourth (who has generally been least impressive, but sounded like she maybe had a good idea on this?), thought it may be mildly useful.
I’m a bit surprised by this. The entire logic behind booster doses for the immunocompromised (which several countries are already doing, e.g. US/UK) is based on a lack of (or low) immune response to the vaccine, which can be confirmed by an antibody test (measuring antibodies to the spike protein). There are studies with large numbers of people where you can see the median levels of antibodies in healthy adults and compare results (e.g. here and here). These tests are quantitative and give you a number, not just a positive or negative result, some people can have orders of magnitude more antibodies than others as a result of vaccination.
Also my impression is that antibody levels (post vaccination) are possibly correlated or even predict who can be infected and correlate with vaccine effectiveness. Is that not likely to be the case?
This is a bit anecdotal but I’ve read about people in the UK on immunosuppressive therapy getting 4 vaccine doses (as advised by their doctor) in order to generate enough immune response to have detectable antibodies.