Study on new bivalent vaccines

[redsturgeon]

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 2.513349v1

When given as a fourth dose, a bivalent mRNA vaccine targeting Omicron BA.4/BA.5 and an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain did not induce superior neutralizing antibody responses in humans, at the time period tested, compared to the original monovalent vaccine formulation.

[XFool]

...OK. But:

"bioRxiv posts many COVID19-related papers. A reminder: they have not been formally peer-reviewed and should not guide health-related behavior or be reported in the press as conclusive."

Even if it proves to be correct, as there is no evidence of a disadvantage to the bivalent mRNA version, what would be the issue?

Plus, their paper does not seem to cover the situation of people in the UK like myself, who had: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, then the bivalent Moderna Spikevax

[redsturgeon]

...OK. But:

"bioRxiv posts many COVID19-related papers. A reminder: they have not been formally peer-reviewed and should not guide health-related behavior or be reported in the press as conclusive."

Even if it proves to be correct, as there is no evidence of a disadvantage to the bivalent mRNA version, what would be the issue?

Plus, their paper does not seem to cover the situation of people in the UK like myself, who had: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, then the bivalent Moderna Spikevax

Just giving the information, it's up to you what to do with it.

John

[XFool]

Just giving the information, it's up to you what to do with it.

Fair enough.

[scotia]

Just giving the information, it's up to you what to do with it.

John

Thanks for the reference. As far as we were concerned (upper 70s), the boost from any of the vaccines would have been acceptable. We guessed that a bivalent vaccine (which we received) would give some improvement against omicron - but if that is not the case, then it doesn't matter - its getting another boost that matters (and our flu jab at the same time).
I have had a look at the (full text) paper. Maybe I have missed a key feature in the text - what was the sample size? The two comparison groups had significantly different average ages - 55.3 years for the group on four monovalent vaccinations, and 36.4 years for three monovalent plus one bivalent vaccinations. Why? A suspicious mind suggests that their sample sizes are small (and associated statistical accuracies are poor) - otherwise they would have attempted to balance the age profiles in their groups. OK - I have had another look, and have blown up their diagram to readable size. It contains the character "n" at the base of each graph. This ranges from 14 to 21. I suspect this may be the total number of participants. And the graphs are logarithmic in the vertical - so the error bars are really large.

[XFool]

Just giving the information, it's up to you what to do with it.

I have had a look at the (full text) paper. Maybe I have missed a key feature in the text - what was the sample size? The two comparison groups had significantly different average ages - 55.3 years for the group on four monovalent vaccinations, and 36.4 years for three monovalent plus one bivalent vaccinations. Why? A suspicious mind suggests that their sample sizes are small (and associated statistical accuracies are poor) - otherwise they would have attempted to balance the age profiles in their groups. OK - I have had another look, and have blown up their diagram to readable size. It contains the character "n" at the base of each graph. This ranges from 14 to 21. I suspect this may be the total number of participants.

You are indeed correct. "Table S1. Summary of clinical cohorts" and "Table S2. Demographics of clinical cohorts" are in "Supplementary Material"