COVID-19 mRNA vaccines reduce immune response to other infections, potential concern for immune deficiency

Written by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A recent study on the immunological effects of Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine has scientists raising concerns about vaccine-acquired immune deficiencies.

Vaccine-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (VAIDS) is a new colloquial term coined by researchers and health professionals since the launch of the COVID-19 vaccine. Although not recognized as a medical condition, some experts believe that vaccines against COVID-19 may affect or suppress immune responses.

Although the new study does not use the term VAIDS, the researchers recognized “a general decrease in cytokine and chemokine responses” to non-COVID bacteria, fungi and viruses in children after vaccination against COVID-19.

“Our results suggest that SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination could alter the immune response to other pathogens, which cause both vaccine-preventable and non-vaccine-preventable diseases.,” wrote the authors of the paper published in Frontiers in Immunology.

“This is particularly relevant in children, as they: have high exposure to microbes at daycare, school and social occasions; often encounter these microbes for the first time; and receive multiple vaccinations as part of routine schedules of childhood vaccination”.

Researchers at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, took blood samples from 29 children, both pre-vaccinated and after two doses of Pfizer’s mRNA.

They found that post-vaccination blood samples had a lower cytokine response to non-Covid pathogens compared to pre-vaccination.. This reduced immune response was particularly persistent for non-Covid viruses. Blood samples taken at six months showed that some children still had low responses to hepatitis B virus proteins and proteins that mimic a viral infection; however, cytokine responses were increased for bacterial exposures.

Immune responses to COVID-19 proteins, including spike proteins and their S1 and S2 subunits, and nucleocapsid proteins remained high after vaccination.

Professor Retsef Levi, who specializes in risk management and health systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published in X (formerly known as Twitter) that the study “adds to accumulating evidence suggesting adverse immune disruption” by the COVID-19 vaccination. Family doctor Dr. Syed Haider and immunologist and computational biologist Jessica Rose both connected the study’s findings to VAIDS.

Rebuttal

Marc Veldhoen, immunologist specializing in T-cell responses and head of a laboratory at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular de Portugal, challenged the study’s findings.

In an X thread, Mr. Veldhoen highlighted the study’s flaws, including the lack of controls, meaning children who were not vaccinated, to compare with the subject group on their innate immune responses to other pathogens.

“Without an unvaccinated control group, at least one other vaccine control group (to claim specificity), a much larger number of subjects and cell composition data, [the study authors’] the conclusion is speculation, and it is unlikely to last,” Mr. Veldhoen wrote.

Accumulation of studies suggesting a decrease in immunity after vaccination

The study is one of many that suggest a decreased immune response after vaccination against COVID-19.

A preprint study in 16 adults inoculated with Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines had similar findings of a reduced innate immune response in participants exposed to pathogenic fungi. The same paper also found long-term changes in innate immune cells.

The Epoch Times reported on a January study out of Germany that showed multiple mRNA vaccines induce a “class switch” in the type of antibodies formed against the spike protein and other COVID-19 proteins.

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