Dr. Tania Watts, a Professor and Associate Chair of the Postdoctoral Program at the University of Toronto, previously found that patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID) receiving anti-cytokine biologics show decreasing T cell responses 3-4 months after their second COVID-19 vaccine dose. Her research team aimed to gain deeper insights into vaccine responses by examining just one disease within the broader IMID group, which includes IBD, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, and psoriatic disease.
How Do Patients with IBD Respond to Vaccines?
In a new study published in The Journal of Immunology, Dr. Watts describes how they used residual patient samples from the IMPACT study to focus on patients with IBD and understand how their T cell responses may differ from those of healthy individuals. By concentrating on a single disease group, the researchers aimed to better characterize differences in immune responses.
Using the patient samples, the researchers compared vaccine-induced immune responses between IBD patients treated with antibodies blocking TNF or IL-12/23, untreated IBD patients, and healthy controls. Using single-cell RNA-sequencing, they performed in-depth analyses of vaccine-induced T cell responses following multiple doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Following one dose of vaccine, anti-TNF or anti-IL-12/23-treated IBD patients had lower COVID-19 Spike-specific IL-2 production than untreated IBD patients. Plus, whether treated or untreated, IBD patients showed lower Spike-specific Th1 polarization and greater waning of Spike-specific T cell cytokine responses after the first vaccine dose compared to healthy controls. However, following 2 or 3 doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, differences in T cell subsets, transcriptomes, or T cell receptor diversity among anti-cytokine biologics-treated IBD patients and healthy controls were minimal.
Vaccine Responses are Similar
“Despite differences in initial T cell responses, our findings provide reassurance that after 2nd and 3rd doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Spike specific memory T cells induced by vaccination in IBD patients treated with anti-cytokine biologics are largely indistinguishable from those in healthy controls,” said first author, Dr. Michelle Cheung.
Given the rapidly rising global prevalence of IBD, these data should be reassuring to patients and their caregivers, as IBD patients are often treated with anti-cytokine biologics.
“While the study was limited by a small number of subjects, extending this type of research to larger patient groups, anti-TNF or anti-IL-12/23 treated patients with other indications besides IBD, other anti-cytokine biological treatments, or other vaccines, would be of interest,” shared Dr. Watts.
The full research paper can be found in The Journal of Immunology (The JI), published by the American Association of Immunologists. As one of the most highly cited journals in the field of immunology, The JI is committed to describing novel findings in all areas of experimental immunology, including basic and clinical studies.
