Recently I saw a patient with interstitial lung disease in my practice who has just been discharged from the hospital recovering from COVID19 pneumonia. This was her second COVID19 pneumonia, which she acquired despite being fully vaccinated. 

We know a lot about development of immunity in response to vaccination in healthy individuals, however there is a lot to learn whether the immunity response is different in people who have various chronic diseases.  In our February journal club we reviewed the paper, recently published in CHEST journal titled Impaired SARS CoV-2 mRNA Vaccine antibody response in Chronic Medical Conditions.  

The authors analyzed the antibody response following immunizations in patients with chronic diseases. Using a multivariate logistic regression model they identified clinical characteristics associated with lack of the immune response to the vaccine. 

It turns out that certain chronic diseases such as interstitial lung disease and congestive heart failure are risk factors for lack of antibody response. In addition some of the medications used for treatment of chronic conditions may put patients at risk of not having immunity to COVID19 despite being vaccinated.

This publication adds to our understanding of how different chronic conditions and medications affect the ability to mount the response to COVID19 infection.

Published: January 2022

For the full article, follow the link: https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(22)00015-0/fulltext