Our TITAN Paper is out!
Some of the authors celebrate publishing their research!
From left to right: Komal Srivastava, Dr. Meenakshi Rana, Dr. Viviana Simon, Dr. Carlos Cordon-Cardo, and Charles Gleason
In collaboration with the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute and other labs within the Mount Sinai Health System, we studied how well COVID-19 vaccines work in people who have had organ transplants, including some who also have HIV, utilizing our TITAN cohort (Tracking Immunity through Transplant SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies and Neutralization).
Here are some of our key findings:
People with HIV responded to the vaccines about the same as those without HIV.
Most people had some protection before getting a third dose, and almost everyone who started without antibodies eventually developed them after more vaccine doses or catching COVID-19.
Two things mattered most:
Certain transplant medicines (called antimetabolites) made it harder for the body to respond to the vaccine.
Getting vaccinated before the transplant helped.
The protection from the vaccines lasted over time and worked well against the original COVID-19 virus.
For transplant patients, extra vaccine doses are important, and timing the shots before surgery can improve protection. HIV, if well controlled, doesn’t seem to reduce vaccine effectiveness.