China’s COVID-19 Vaccine Is Safe And Boosts Antibody Response: Lancet Study

Peking: The Chinese Covid-19 vaccine candidate BBIBP-CorV, which is expected to completely inactivate the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is safe and elicits an antibody response, a study published in The Lancet found.

A previous clinical study reported similar results for another vaccine, also based on the inactivated whole SARS-CoV-2 virus. In this study, however, the vaccine was only tested on people under the age of 60.

The latest study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, enrolled participants between the ages of 18 and 80 and found that antibody responses were induced in all recipients.

Participants aged 60 and over responded more slowly and took 42 days to detect antibodies in all recipients compared to 28 days for participants aged 18 to 59 years.

“Protecting the elderly is a key goal of a successful Covid-19 vaccine as this age group is at a higher risk of developing serious diseases,” said study author Xiaoming Yang of the Beijing Institute of Biological Products Company Limited in China.

However, vaccines are sometimes less effective in this group because the immune system weakens with age.

“It is therefore encouraging to see that BBIBP-CorV elicits antibody responses in people 60 years and older, and we believe this warrants further investigation,” added Yang.

The BBIBP-CorV vaccine used in the study reported here is based on a sample of the virus isolated from a patient in China.

Stocks of the virus were grown in the laboratory using cell lines and then inactivated using a chemical called beta-propionolactone.

BBIBP-CorV contains the killed virus mixed with another component, aluminum hydroxide, called an adjuvant because it is known to increase the immune response.

In the first phase of the study, the optimal safe dose for BBIBP-CorV should be determined.

96 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 59 and a second group of 96 participants between the ages of 60 and 80 were involved.

Within each group, the vaccine was tested at three different doses, with two vaccinations being given on day zero and day 28.

A fourth group within each age group (24 participants in each age group) received two doses of a placebo vaccine. A total of 144 participants received the vaccine and 48 the placebo in phase 1 of the study.

The second phase of the study was to determine the optimal schedule for vaccination.

Participants were asked to report adverse events during the first seven days after each vaccination, which were reviewed by the research team.

“No serious adverse events were reported within 28 days of the final vaccination. In none of the groups were clinically significant changes in organ functions found in laboratory tests, ”the authors wrote.