The hospital treats patients without COVID antibodies

The General University Hospital of Ciudad Real, as well as others in Castilla-La Mancha, are carrying out immunoprevention treatment with those patients who, after receiving COVID vaccines, have not generated the antibodies necessary to protect themselves from the coronavirus. This is a measure approved in February. At the moment the hospital has already inoculated this antibody treatment in people immunocompromised for haematological diseases and is studying the continuation with HIV patients, on whom the COVID vaccine has had no effect, due to the drugs they must take for their disease.

“There is a group of people who have not responded to the COVID vaccine,” said Victoria Caballero, head of the Preventive Medicine service at the Ciudad Real hospital. These are people being treated for cancer, transplant recipients or, in general, those who have treatments that affect the immune system. These patients are inoculated with an injection of monoclonal antibodies due to their poor response to the vaccine. “These antibodies are a replacement for the vaccine, since the body hasn’t gotten a response against COVID, we’re giving it to it,” said Caballero.

The work is done in stages on these patients. “We started with those at the highest risk, the haematological ones”, with leukemias or lymphomas. Specifically, patients who do not reach a certain level of antibodies are treated after receiving all doses of the coronavirus vaccine. For this reason, before starting treatment, they undergo serology, a test that measures antibodies, and those who do not exceed 260 antibody binding units (BAUs) per milliliter are treated. This is “the limit set at a general level”.

The idea, Caballero pointed out, could be similar to that used with the plasma of those patients who have had COVID, with the use of antibodies. This is a treatment of the disease and this is preventive. The idea is to carry out periodic checks and, for example, with the arrival of the fourth dose shortly for the over 80s, the healthcare personnel and also for these patients, it will be necessary to carry out tests that still maintain the levels of antibodies.

This treatment is not the only one that is performed with patients who have treatments that affect their immune system. For example, this type of patients are vaccinated against shingles, as it is another disease that usually affects them.

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