By Reuters Staff NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among kidney-transplant recipients, two doses of an mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine will lower the risk for infection, although perhaps not as much compared with the general population, according to a study from the Czech Republic.
Kidney-transplant recipients are considered particularly vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 and the real-world protection provided by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines remains uncertain.
To investigate, Dr. Ondrej Viklicky and colleagues with the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague compared the rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection in 2,101 kidney-transplant patients who did and did not receive mRNA vaccination between February and May of 2021, when the Alpha variant was predominant in the Czech Republic.
Infection with SARS-CoV-2 was reported in 33 vaccinated and 79 unvaccinated patients. The incidence rate was lower in the vaccinated than unvaccinated group (0.47 vs. 1.37 per 1,000 person-days), with an unadjusted incidence-rate ratio of 0.35 (95% CI, 0.23 to 0.51) and a multivariable-adjusted IRR for transplant recipients of 0.54 (95% CI, 0.32 to 0.88).
Writing in Annals of Internal Medicine, the researchers say "the association between two doses of mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and lowered risk for infection shown in our study provides much needed real-world evidence."
"However, despite the effectiveness in kidney transplant recipients, there were still breakthrough infections, and indirect comparisons suggest lower effectiveness compared with the general population," they point out.
