cientists warn that repeated COVID-19 boosters may result in lowered immunity through a process known as “original antigenic sin,” or “immune imprinting” — making you more susceptible to symptomatic infections.
Story at a glance:
- Scientists warn that repeated COVID-19 boosters may result in lowered immunity through a process known as “original antigenic sin” (OAS) or “immune imprinting.”
- Original antigenic sin describes how your first exposure to a virus shapes the outcome of subsequent exposures to antigenically related strains. The end result is that you become increasingly prone to symptomatic infections.
- Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirm that people who got two or three COVID-19 jabs are MORE likely to get ill with COVID-19 six to eight months after the last dose than had they gotten none.
- Health authorities are potentially worsening matters further by pushing people to simultaneously get the updated bivalent COVID-19 booster and a quadrivalent flu vaccine this fall.
- The COVID-19 jab and the flu vaccine are the No. 1 and No. 2 most dangerous injections respectively, based on adverse event reports and payouts from the U.S. Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Both are also capable of shedding, and both can make you more prone to infection as their protection wears off.
COVID-19 has been going on for nearly three years, and with a whole new set of untested COVID-19 boosters being rolled out, some scientists are taking a step back, cautioning that there still are unanswered questions about how the shots work.
They say more research needs to be done on what is known as “original antigenic sin,” aka “immune imprinting,” which refers to how your immune system responds to repeated introductions of the COVID-19 variants.
Understanding original antigenic sin
The following description of original antigenic sin was published in a January 2019 Journal of Immunology paper titled “Original Antigenic Sin: How First Exposure Shapes Lifelong Anti–Influenza Virus Immune Responses”:
“The term ‘original antigenic sin’ was first used in the 1960s to describe how one’s first exposure to influenza virus shapes the outcome of subsequent exposures to antigenically related strains. In the decades that have passed, OAS-like responses have been shown to play an integral role in both protection from and susceptibility to infections.
“OAS may also have an important deterministic role in the differential efficacy of influenza vaccine responses observed for various age cohorts across seasons …
“OAS describes the phenomenon whereby the development of immunity against pathogens/Ags is shaped by the first exposure to a related pathogen/Ag … subsequent infections with similar influenza virus strains preferentially boost the Ab response against the original strain …
“The critical role of primary exposure in shaping the composition of the Ab repertoire was not only observed in humans after influenza virus infections; this phenomenon was also observed in animal models and in the context of other infectious agents.
“For example, additional serum absorption experiments in ferrets infected in succession with three different influenza virus strains demonstrated that nearly all of the host Abs after the infection series were reactive against the first strain, only a fraction of serum Abs could be absorbed by the secondary virus, and fewer yet by the tertiary virus.”
Simplified example
Here’s a layman’s summary to illustrate this phenomenon as simply as possible, within the context of COVID-19:
- Exposed to the original Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 strain, your humoral immune system is programmed to produce antibodies against that specific virus. Similarly, if you got the jab, your body will produce antibodies against the viral spike protein formulated into that shot.
- Exposed to the Delta strain, your immune system responds first by boosting the production of the original antibodies, while antibodies specific against Delta are produced in a far lower amount as it takes time for your body to respond to the new strain.
- Exposed to an Omicron variant, your immune system again responds by boosting the original antibodies, while antibodies against Omicron are produced in even lower amounts than those against Delta.
As a result of this process, with each exposure to a new variant, the original antibodies get “back-boosted.” So, over time, those antibodies come to predominate.
The process is (at least theoretically) the same for all vaccinations. Each booster dose back-boosts or strengthens the original antibodies, making them more and more predominant.
The problem is that they may not be effective at neutralizing newer strains (depending on the amount of mutation), thus rendering you more and more prone to symptomatic infection.
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