You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 81, Issue 4
  • Immunogenicity of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in adolescents with juvenile idiopathic arthritis on treatment with TNF inhibitors

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Letter
Immunogenicity of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in adolescents with juvenile idiopathic arthritis on treatment with TNF inhibitors
  1. Dimitra Dimopoulou1,
  2. George Vartzelis2,
  3. Foteini Dasoula2,
  4. Maria Tsolia1,
  5. Despoina Maritsi3
  1. 1 Infectious Diseases’ Unit, Second Department of Paediatrics, 'P. & A. Kyriakou' Children's Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University, Athens, Greece
  2. 2 Second Department of Pediatrics, 'P. & A. Kyriakou' Children's Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University, Athens, Greece
  3. 3 Immunology and Rheumatology Unit, Second Department of Paediatrics, 'P. & A. Kyriakou' Children's Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University, Athens, Greece
  1. Correspondence to Dr Dimitra Dimopoulou, Second Department of Pediatrics, Aglaia Kiriakou Children's Hospital, Athens, Greece; dimi_med{at}hotmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2021-221607

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Patients with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) on immunosuppressants are generally considered to be more prone to infections, and therefore, a vulnerable group for severe COVID-19 infection. However, current data are reassuring, indicating that immunosuppression, and especially, TNF inhibitor (TNF-i) treatment, is not a specific risk factor for severe or fatal disease.1 On the other hand, treatment with rituximab is associated with more severe disease and less favourable outcome.1 So far, adherence to personal protection measures and immunisation comprise the two available strategies for battling the COVID-19 pandemic.2 In the adult population, it has been demonstrated that the vast majority of patients with RMDs using non-B-cell-depleting therapy who received two doses of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine mounted a protective immune response.3 4 Until recently, data regarding the immunogenicity of COVID-19 vaccination in adolescents with RMDs on immunosuppressants were lacking, since these individuals were excluded from the vaccine trials.5 The purpose of this study was to evaluate the immunogenicity of the BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine in adolescents with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) on TNF-i treatment.

    This single-centre study involved adolescents aged 16–21 years previously diagnosed with …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Josef S Smolen

    • Contributors DD: writing of the MS, critical review of the MS, approval of the final version. GV: collection of the data, critical review of the MS, approval of the final version. FD: collection of the data, critical review of the MS, approval of the final version. MT: critical review of the MS, approval of the final version. DM: writing of the MS, critical review of the MS, approval of the final version.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.