Pawelec Graham, McElhaney Janet
Department of Immunology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Health Sciences North Research Institute, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Immun Ageing. 2021 Feb 17;18(1):7. doi: 10.1186/s12979-021-00219-y.
The rapidity with which vaccines against COVID-19 have been developed and tested is unprecedented. As classically the case with randomized clinical trials, many studies excluded older adults. However, given the early realisation that senior citizens were most highly susceptible to COVID, older individuals have been included in licensing trials under these unusual conditions. The recently published results from the Comirnaty Vaccine (BNT162b) trial unexpectedly documented that vaccine efficacy was equally exceptionally high in older and younger adults. These extremely encouraging trial results with a neoantigen vaccine may suggest the beginning of a paradigm shift in our view of the impact of immunosenescence on vaccination against novel infectious diseases.
针对新冠病毒的疫苗研发和测试速度之快是前所未有的。与传统的随机临床试验一样，许多研究将老年人排除在外。然而，鉴于人们很早就认识到老年人对新冠病毒最为易感，在这些特殊情况下，老年人已被纳入疫苗许可试验。最近公布的辉瑞疫苗（BNT162b）试验结果意外地表明，该疫苗在老年人和年轻人中的疗效同样异常高。这些关于新抗原疫苗的极其令人鼓舞的试验结果可能表明，我们对免疫衰老对新型传染病疫苗接种影响的看法开始发生范式转变。
