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The vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna set off a persistent immune reaction in the body that may protect against the coronavirus for years, scientists reported on Monday.

The findings add to growing evidence that most people immunized with the mRNA vaccines may not need boosters, so long as the virus and its variants do not evolve much beyond their current forms which is not guaranteed. People who recovered from Covid-19 before being vaccinated may not need boosters even if the virus does make a significant transformation.

"It's a good sign for how durable our immunity is from this vaccine," said Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.

The study did not consider the coronavirus vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, but Dr. Ellebedy said he expected the immune response to be less durable than that produced by mRNA vaccines.

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https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEPseiOus8Rx9aGcI5nCymjMqFwgEKg8IACoHCAowjuuKAzCWrzwwloIY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

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People who were infected with the coronavirus and then immunized see a major boost in their antibody levels, most likely because their memory B cells which produce antibodies had many months to evolve before vaccination.

The good news: A booster vaccine will probably have the same effect as prior infection in immunized people, Dr. Ellebedy said. "If you give them another chance to engage, they will have a massive response," he said, referring to memory B cells.

In terms of bolstering the immune system, vaccination is "probably better" than recovering from the actual infection, he said. Other studies have suggested that the repertoire of memory B cells produced after vaccination is more diverse than that generated by infection, suggesting that the vaccines will protect better against variants than natural immunity alone.

Dr. Ellebedy said the results also suggested that these signs of persistent immune reaction might be caused by mRNA vaccines alone, as opposed to those made by more traditional means, like Johnson & Johnson's

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The rapid deployment of mRNA vaccine is going to change medicine in the next 10-20 years. It is going to be useful for future vaccines (like better flu and RSV vaccine), cancer treatment, even multidrug resistant bacterial treatment. It is a game changer.

waitwhat? said:

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An alternative headline is "people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and thus have natural immunity do not need the vaccines because immunity appears to last for years."

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Username checks out. Nowhere in that article did it say what you stated.

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People who were infected with the coronavirus and then immunized see a major boost in their antibody levels, most likely because their memory B cells which produce antibodies had many months to evolve before vaccination.
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In terms of bolstering the immune system, vaccination is "probably better" than recovering from the actual infection, he said. Other studies have suggested that the repertoire of memory B cells produced after vaccination is more diverse than that generated by infection, suggesting that the vaccines will protect better against variants than natural immunity alone.

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Based on those findings, researchers suggested that immunity might last for years, possibly a lifetime, in people who were infected with the coronavirus and later vaccinated.

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KidDoc said:

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The rapid deployment of mRNA vaccine is going to change medicine in the next 10-20 years. It is going to be useful for future vaccines (like better flu and RSV vaccine), cancer treatment, even multidrug resistant bacterial treatment. It is a game changer.

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I hope so. The key breakthroughs might have come earlier if there had been more well-known domestic threats. It will be interesting to see who gets the Nobel prizes. Of course, it should be in chemistry

I doubt most people see much beyond Covid to just what an awesome breakthrough this is. Right up there with PCR and gene editing, imo, when it comes to the last 50 years of life sciences, and on the level of antibiotics and wonder drugs (ivermectin, cis-platin, taxol...) when it comes to the molecular pharma side of things.

waitwhat? said:

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An alternative headline is "people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and thus have natural immunity do not need the vaccines because immunity appears to last for years."

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People should go ahead and flag this because this is not known at this point, and as another poster pointed out, is not mentioned in the linked article.

Thank you for mentioning this. Honestly, this could treat any condition with a unique protein sequence. I'd love see this utilized to treat things like melanoma, HIV, etc.

KidDoc said:

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The rapid deployment of mRNA vaccine is going to change medicine in the next 10-20 years. It is going to be useful for future vaccines (like better flu and RSV vaccine), cancer treatment, even multidrug resistant bacterial treatment. It is a game changer.

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Not a physician. I have been paying attention to the research on mRNA vaccines and reading the peer reviewed literature for close to a decade. I have thought this for awhile, we were just waiting for all of the research and technology to advance to a point where it was justified in widespread use and that future vaccines (even for viruses with long standing vaccines) would be mRNA-type. The success of these vaccines in the last year makes me very hopeful for the future.