Background SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines have proven high efficacy, however, limited data exists on the duration of immune responses and their relation to age and side effects. Methods We studied the antibody and memory T cell responses after the two-dose BNT162b2 vaccine in 122 volunteers up to 6 months and correlated the findings with age and side effects. Findings We found a robust antibody response to Spike protein after the second dose. However, the antibody levels declined at 12 weeks and 6 months post-vaccination, indicating a waning of the immune response over time. At 6 months after the second dose, the Spike antibody levels were similar to the levels in persons vaccinated with one dose or in COVID-19 convalescent individuals. The antibodies efficiently blocked ACE2 receptor binding to SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein of five variants of concern at one week but this was decreased at three months. 87% of individuals developed Spike-specific memory T cell responses, which were lower in individuals with increased proportions of immunosenescent CD8 + TEMRA cells. We found antibody response to correlate negatively with age and positively with the total score of vaccination side effects. Interpretation The mRNA vaccine induces a strong antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 and five VOCs at 1 week post-vaccination that decreases thereafter. T cell responses, although detectable in the majority, were lower in individuals with higher T cell immunosenescence. The deterioration of vaccine response suggests the need to monitor for the potential booster vaccination.

SummaryAPS1/APECED patients are defined by defects in the autoimmune regulator (AIRE) that mediates central T cell tolerance to many self-antigens. AIRE deficiency also affects B cell tolerance, but this is incompletely understood. Here we show that most APS1/APECED patients displayed B cell autoreactivity toward unique sets of approximately 100 self-proteins. Thereby, autoantibodies from 81 patients collectively detected many thousands of human proteins. The loss of B cell tolerance seemingly occurred during antibody affinity maturation, an obligatorily T cell-dependent step. Consistent with this, many APS1/APECED patients harbored extremely high-affinity, neutralizing autoantibodies, particularly against specific cytokines. Such antibodies were biologically active in vitro and in vivo, and those neutralizing type I interferons (IFNs) showed a striking inverse correlation with type I diabetes, not shown by other anti-cytokine antibodies. Thus, naturally occurring human autoantibodies may actively limit disease and be of therapeutic utility.

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Patients with the autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type I (APS-I), caused by mutations in the autoimmune regulator (AIRE) gene, and myasthenia gravis (MG) with thymoma, show intriguing but unexplained parallels. They include uncommon manifestations like autoimmune adrenal insufficiency (AI), hypoparathyroidism (HP), and chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis (CMC) plus autoantibodies neutralizing IL-17, IL-22 and type I interferons. Thymopoiesis in the absence of AIRE is implicated in both syndromes. To test whether these parallels extend further, we screened 247 patients with MG and/or thymoma for clinical features and organ-specific autoantibodies characteristic of APS-I patients, and assayed 26 thymoma samples for transcripts for AIRE and 16 peripheral tissue-specific autoantigens (TSAgs) by quantitative PCR. We found APS-I-typical autoantibodies and clinical manifestations, including CMC, AI and asplenia, respectively in 49/121 (40%) and 10/121 (8%) thymoma patients, but clinical features seldom co-occurred with the corresponding autoantibodies. Both were rare in other MG subgroups (N=126). In 38 APS-I patients, by contrast, we observed neither autoantibodies against muscle antigens nor any neuromuscular disorders. Whereas relative transcript levels for AIRE and 7 of 16 TSAgs showed the expected under-expression in thymomas, levels were increased for 4 of the 5 TSAgs most frequently targeted by these patients’ autoAbs. Hence the clinical and serologic parallels to APS-I in patients with thymomas are not explained purely by deficient TSAg transcription in these aberrant AIRE-deficient tumors. We therefore propose additional explanations for the unusual autoimmune biases they provoke. Thymoma patients should be monitored for potentially life-threatening APS-I manifestations such as AI and HP.