A clinical study on mix-and-match COVID-19 vaccines has found that booster shots with the Moderna vaccine are the most effective, the study’s lead researcher said yesterday.
The study, which began in December last year at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and whose results were published yesterday, involved 340 participants with an average age of 35 who had received two doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, lead researcher Chiu Cheng-hsun (邱政洵), who is the vice superintendent of the hospital’s branch in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), told a news conference.
The participants were divided into four groups, Chiu said, adding that the respective groups were inoculated with full doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Medigen or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, or half-doses of Moderna.
Photo: CNA
The study mixed not only vaccine brands, but also technologies, as the AstraZeneca shot is a viral vector vaccine, while the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots are messenger RNA vaccines and the Medigen shot is a protein subunit vaccine, he said.
The study found that the participants who had received the Moderna booster — either as a full or a half dose — had higher levels of neutralizing antibodies than those who had gotten the other two brands, Chiu said.
Twenty-eight days after inoculation, full-dose Moderna recipients’ neutralizing antibody levels had risen 47.7-fold, while half-dose recipients had 39.8-times higher levels, he said.
Pfizer-BioNTech recipients had 32.2-times higher levels, while Medigen recipients’ levels had risen 12.7-fold, he said.
Neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 rose 86.6-fold for full-dose Moderna recipients and 81.5-fold for half-dose Moderna recipients, he said.
Delta antibody levels rose 97.8-fold for full-dose Moderna recipients and 73.2-fold for half-dose recipients, while Pfizer-BioNTech recipients had 57.8-times higher levels and Medigen recipients had 23.8-times higher levels, he said.
The study was the first of its kind in Taiwan, as it also examined the changes in the participants’ T-cell immune responses, which plays an important role in preventing severe COVID-19 symptoms, Chiu said.
Full-dose Moderna recipients had a 4.2-times stronger T-cell response, half-dose Moderna recipients had a 3.9-times stronger response, Medigen recipients had a 3.3-times stronger response and Pfizer-BioNTech recipients had a 3.1-times stronger response, he said.
The side effects reported in the mix-and-match booster study were mostly mild, with only 4.6 percent of the Medigen recipients and 30 percent of the Moderna recipients developing a fever, he said.
However, the study did not focus on how long booster shots offer protection beyond the 28th day after inoculation.
In related news, Taiwan yesterday reported 91 new imported COVID-19 cases and no new domestic cases, the Central Epidemic Command Center said.
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