Jennifer Couzin-FrankelScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.A few months ago, transplant surgeon Dorry Segev was despondent about how COVID-19 vaccines were performing in patients like his, who have a donated organ and take powerful drugs to suppress their immune system.
After one dose of a highly effective messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, for example, just 17% of those patients churned out protective antibodies against the pandemic coronavirus, and after the standard two doses, only 54% did.
The very medications his patients took to protect their transplanted organ precluded them from mounting a healthy immune response after the vaccine.