• Jihye Um, Youn Young Choi, Gayeon Kim, Min-Kyung Kim, Kyung-Shin Lee, Ho Kyung Sung, Byung Chul Kim, Yoo-Kyoung Lee, Hee-Chang Jang, Ji Hwan Bang, Ki-Hyun Chung, Myoung-Don Oh, Jun-Sun Park, and Jaehyun Jeon.
• Research Institute of Public Health, National Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
• J. Korean Med. Sci. 2022 Mar 7; 37 (9): e70e70.

AbstractConcerns about the effectiveness of current vaccines against the rapidly spreading severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 omicron (B.1.1.529) variant are increasing. This study aimed to assess neutralizing antibody activity against the wild-type (BetaCoV/Korea/KCDC03/2020), delta, and omicron variants after full primary and booster vaccinations with BNT162b2. A plaque reduction neutralization test was employed to determine 50% neutralizing dilution (ND50) titers in serum samples. ND50 titers against the omicron variant (median [interquartile range], 5.3 [< 5.0-12.7]) after full primary vaccination were lower than those against the wild-type (144.8 [44.7-294.0]) and delta (24.3 [14.3-81.1]) variants. Furthermore, 19/30 participants (63.3%) displayed lower ND50 titers than the detection threshold (< 10.0) against omicron after full primary vaccination. However, the booster vaccine significantly increased ND50 titers against BetaCoV/Korea/KCDC03/2020, delta, and omicron, although titers against omicron remained lower than those against the other variants (P < 0.001). Our study suggests that booster vaccination with BNT162b2 significantly increases humoral immunity against the omicron variant.© 2022 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences.

17 keywords...

hide…