Vaccine Efficacy and Safety in People with Kidney Diseases/Kidney Transplant Recipients

A special issue of Vaccines (ISSN 2076-393X). This special issue belongs to the section "Vaccine Efficacy and Safety".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2025 | Viewed by 707

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Nephrology, Heidelberg University Hospital, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
Interests: immunology; nephrology; vaccination; kidney transplantation; chronic kidney disease

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The COVID-19 pandemic unmasked the impact of extrinsic immunosuppression, as in kidney transplant recipients, or intrinsic immunosuppression, as in ESRD patients with chronic inflammation and immune senescence with exceptionally high lethality. Immunocompromised cohorts with kidney diseases (e.g., hemodialysis patients, peritoneal dialysis patients, kidney transplant recipients, patients with systemic autoimmune diseases etc.) have a significantly impaired SARS-CoV-2 vaccine response compared with healthy subjects, even to new mRNA vaccines. Major efforts have been made to increase humoral and cellular immunity, even against variants with immune escape, via different booster vaccinations. These include mRNA vaccines, as well as heterologous vaccination regimens. During the last year, a decisive contribution has been made to protect particularly vulnerable patient collectives from severe COVID-19 courses as effectively, safely, and promptly as possible. In addition, knowledge from different COVID-19 vaccine trials is valuable for the role it plays in generating information for optimizing the effectiveness of vaccination in collectives with kidney diseases beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

The initial mRNA vaccines were based on the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. With the upcoming different Omicron variants characterized by immune escape, novel vaccination strategies, including adapted mRNA vaccines against epitopes of emerging variants, are needed to protect high-risk individuals. However, further research is needed to fully understand the efficacy and safety of these bivalent vaccines against emerging variants. This Special Issue specifically welcomes (1) the submission of manuscripts that address efficacy, immunogenicity, and long-term immune response after bivalent COVID-19 vaccination, and (2) studies of non-COVID-19 vaccines that examine humoral and cellular immunity to various vaccines in immunocompromised individuals with kidney disease.

Dr. Claudius Speer
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • vaccines
  • mRNA vaccines
  • kidney transplant recipients
  • immunosuppression
  • biomarkers
  • dialysis

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

20 pages, 7054 KiB  
Article
Dietary Inulin to Improve SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Response in Kidney Transplant Recipients: The RIVASTIM-Inulin Randomised Controlled Trial
by Julian Singer, Matthew J. Tunbridge, Bree Shi, Griffith B. Perkins, Cheng Sheng Chai, Tania Salehi, Beatrice Z. Sim, Svjetlana Kireta, Julie K. Johnston, Anouschka Akerman, Vanessa Milogiannakis, Anupriya Aggarwal, Stuart Turville, Pravin Hissaria, Tracey Ying, Huiling Wu, Branka Grubor-Bauk, P. Toby Coates and Steven J. Chadban
Vaccines 2024, 12(6), 608; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines12060608 - 3 Jun 2024
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Abstract
Kidney transplant recipients are at an increased risk of hospitalisation and death from SARS-CoV-2 infection, and standard two-dose vaccination schedules are typically inadequate to generate protective immunity. Gut dysbiosis, which is common among kidney transplant recipients and known to effect systemic immunity, may [...] Read more.
Kidney transplant recipients are at an increased risk of hospitalisation and death from SARS-CoV-2 infection, and standard two-dose vaccination schedules are typically inadequate to generate protective immunity. Gut dysbiosis, which is common among kidney transplant recipients and known to effect systemic immunity, may be a contributing factor to a lack of vaccine immunogenicity in this at-risk cohort. The gut microbiota modulates vaccine responses, with the production of immunomodulatory short-chain fatty acids by bacteria such as Bifidobacterium associated with heightened vaccine responses in both observational and experimental studies. As SCFA-producing populations in the gut microbiota are enhanced by diets rich in non-digestible fibre, dietary supplementation with prebiotic fibre emerges as a potential adjuvant strategy to correct dysbiosis and improve vaccine-induced immunity. In a randomised, double-bind, placebo-controlled trial of 72 kidney transplant recipients, we found dietary supplementation with prebiotic inulin for 4 weeks before and after a third SARS-CoV2 mRNA vaccine to be feasible, tolerable, and safe. Inulin supplementation resulted in an increase in gut Bifidobacterium, as determined by 16S RNA sequencing, but did not increase in vitro neutralisation of live SARS-CoV-2 virus at 4 weeks following a third vaccination. Dietary fibre supplementation is a feasible strategy with the potential to enhance vaccine-induced immunity and warrants further investigation. Full article
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