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Understanding Neutrophil Extracellular Trap (NET) formation in COVID-19

Subject Area Clinical Immunology and Allergology
Term from 2021 to 2022
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 458740561
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

We were able to uncover not only specific effects of the COVID-vaccination and breakthrough infections but also to investigate general mechanisms of immune responses following vaccination and infection. Our key findings included the following: 1) Humoral and cellular immune responses following vaccination are closely linked, with early T-cell responses predicting the magnitude of later humoral responses. Therefore, monitoring T-cell responses after vaccinations in general may be a valuable method to determine individual vaccination success and find individuals at risk for vaccination failure and in need of booster vaccination. 2) Heterologous vaccination regimes produce more durable immune responses, especially in terms of the cellular immune response, where less waning over time can be seen in these regimes. 3) Breakthrough infections boost the humoral immune response and improve virus neutralization by spike-directed antibodies, but do not improve the cellular immune response, accounting for an improvement of short-term protection against SARS-CoV2-infection but likely no improvement of long-term immunity. 4) In the Omicron and past-Omicron era environmental factors such as social encounters, individual protective measures, children in the household etc. appear to outweigh immunological parameters in terms of the infection risk, as breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated individuals could not be predicted any more by a KI-based algorithm.

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