According to a recent study, less than half of patients with hematologic malignancies developed detectable antibodies after the initial COVID-19 vaccination, but 56 per cent of "nonresponders" developed antibodies after receiving a booster dose. The findings of the research were published in the journal 'Cancer'.
For the study, Thomas Ollila, MD, of Brown University, and his colleagues retrospectively analyzed antibody responses to initial and booster COVID-19 vaccination in 378 patients with hematologic malignancies.
Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were detected in the blood of 181 patients (48 per cent) after initial vaccination with one of three U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines, and patients with active cancer or those recently treated with an immune cell-depleting therapy were least likely to produce these antibodies.
Among patients who did not mount an antibody response following initial vaccination, responses were observed after a booster dose in 48 of 85 (56 per cent) patients who were assessed.