Two years in the past, German medical doctors stumbled throughout information reviews of a person being investigated for receiving scores of coronavirus vaccines with no medical clarification.
Then adopted a flurry of hypothesis about what he had been as much as. Because it turned out, prosecutors had been trying into whether or not he had been receiving so many additional doses as a part of a scheme to gather stamped immunization playing cards that he may later promote to individuals who wished to skirt vaccine mandates.
However to the medical doctors, the person was a medical anomaly, somebody who had defied official suggestions and turned himself right into a guinea pig for measuring the outer limits of an immune response. Final yr, they requested prosecutors investigating his vaccine splurge to go alongside a request: Would he like to affix a analysis undertaking?
As soon as prosecutors closed their fraud investigation with out legal fees, the person agreed.
By the point the medical doctors first noticed him, the 62-year-old man had obtained 215 doses of coronavirus vaccine, they stated. Flouting their pleas to cease, he obtained one other two pictures within the subsequent months, increasing his immunological stockpile to a mixed 217 doses of eight completely different Covid vaccine sorts over two and a half years.
After months of finding out him, the medical doctors, led by Dr. Kilian Schober, an immunologist on the College of Erlangen-Nuremberg within the German state of Bavaria, reported their findings this week in The Lancet Infectious Illnesses, a medical journal.
The person had seemingly by no means been contaminated with the coronavirus. He reported no vaccine unwanted side effects. And, most curiously to the researchers, his repertoire of antibodies and immune cells was significantly bigger than that of a typical vaccinated particular person, even when the precision of these immune responses remained successfully unchanged.
The researchers discovered that even the 217th shot boosted the person’s immune response. And whereas they had been fastidiously on the lookout for indicators of a progressive weakening in his immune reactions over time — an unwelcome kind of immune tolerance that generally develops throughout long-term viral infections — they reported seeing no such drop-off in responses.
“This means actually how sturdy the immune system’s response is to such repetitive immunization,” Dr. Schober stated. “Even 200 vaccinations aren’t almost as a lot of a problem to the immune system as a persistent an infection.”
The researchers stated the person was from Magdeburg, a metropolis in central Germany, however supplied few different particulars and stated his causes for the vaccination spree had been personal.
The prosecutors had collected proof of 130 vaccinations over 9 months, the researchers wrote. The person’s first vaccination, with a shot made by Johnson & Johnson, got here in June 2021. Most of his subsequent pictures had been mRNA vaccines made by Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech. He additionally obtained a number of of Pfizer-BioNTech’s up to date vaccines.
Along with their very own testing, the scientists relied on the person’s routine medical checks from earlier than and in the course of the pandemic. However as a result of that they had no entry to different vaccine hoarders, the researchers stated their findings couldn’t be used to foretell how different individuals would react to repeated inoculations.
Different sufferers who’re given so many doses may expertise unwanted side effects, Dr. Schober stated, making it unwise for individuals to defy medical recommendation to obtain greater than the beneficial variety of pictures. And whereas the examine steered each that the vaccines had been typically very protected and will proceed to spice up immune responses, the advantages of being repeatedly vaccinated didn’t essentially outweigh the small threat of an extra shot.
As an example, Dr. Schober stated, the person’s antibody ranges dropped off within the durations after his most up-to-date recorded pictures, as they often do in sufferers receiving the same old variety of doses. The discovering steered that the person’s elevated immune response may solely be saved aloft by revaccinating on a regular basis.
“These super-high ranges aren’t sustainable,” Dr. Schober stated. “They might drop off to the traditional stage.”
Nonetheless, the two-and-a-half-year vaccine binge created a sort of immune system stress take a look at that medical doctors by no means would have allowed to occur on their watch. And whereas the outcomes had been removed from conclusive, at the very least this one man’s immune system regarded remarkably resilient.
“200 vaccinations might appear to be loads,” Dr. Schober stated. However immune cells able to reacting to persistent viruses, he added, “are mainly laughing” on the imitation viral particles that they must take care of, even over the course of lots of of pictures.