A new study from Oregon Health & Science University shows that switching arms between doses could lead to as much as a fourfold increase in immune response.
Until recently, doctors didn’t think it made a difference which arm patients got their COVID-19 vaccine in. But a new study from Oregon Health & Science University shows that switching arms between doses could lead to as much as a fourfold increase in immune response. Though further studies are necessary, researchers suspect the improvement has to do with how the body learns to protect itself against viruses, meaning the results could be replicated in other multidose vaccine regimens.
The study: https://www.jci.org/articles/view/176411
Contralateral second dose improves antibody responses to a 2-dose mRNA vaccination regimen
More from the article:
Miller: What did you find?
Curlin: If you switch arms and get your first dose in the right arm and then come back and get your second dose in the left arm, you have about a one-and-a-half to two times higher antibody response over time, compared to people that got it in the same arm. And we’re talking about antibodies specifically directed at the type of virus that the vaccine was made from.
...
Miller: And so we’re imagining how this would actually benefit people. So let’s say that you had the booster and the initial COVID vaccine in just one arm. Then you go to a party. You breathe in some COVID virus particles and they go into your system. And then they eventually hit both sides, but only say your right arm has been trained to make these antibodies?
Curlin: Well, the immune response is general. So regardless of which arms you got, once you’re immunized in some way, by vaccination or previous exposure, you have an immune response. And it doesn’t matter. The arm part is now no longer particularly relevant. It’s how big that immune response is and how broad it is. How able is it to cope with slightly different incoming threats? So if you got your vaccination in the opposite arm and you go to that party, you have a slightly higher level of antibodies.
