The Vaccination Situation Pt 3

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Nobel News

Hey y’all! Today we’re going to be talking about vaccines again! I know, I know, we’ve already gone over them a lot. But buckle up, because this will be a fun ride where we look into specifically mRNA vaccines, which are part of a situation near and dear to our hearts (not really): the COVID-19 pandemic. But first, we have to go back in time a little bit to a 2005 article on PubMed, published by Karikó and Weissman (eventually winning them the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine). They discovered the ability to use nucleoside modifications that prevent the innate immune system from recognizing the virus causing a less inflammatory cytokine production. This helped prevent an overactive immune response to the mRNA which eventually led to the ability to create a viable mRNA vaccine.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the promise of mRNA vaccines was being explored. Largely in part to the contributions of Karikó and Weissman in relation to mRNA stability. This PubMed article published in 2018 discusses the promise behind mRNA vaccines and how they were a viable technology for boosting immunity against viral pathogens. The discoveries of that article in 2005 led to a plethora of additional discoveries, creating a flexible system for developing quick and adaptable vaccines for multiple viruses. Pretty crazy, right?!

MERS and mRNA

Now this is great and all, but how exactly did we get to the COVID-19 vaccines that were used to help mitigate the virus. Well, one of the main guides in helping develop the vaccine was previous studies of MERS. This is partially explained by this PubMed article, which discusses the protein spike that exists on MERS which is similar to COVID-19 spike since both are CoV viruses. Furthermore, studies on vaccines for MERS showed promise for mRNA vaccines working effectively in a single dose format against these spike protein pathogens. It’s pretty cool how one vaccine can provide so much info for another!

Now, since the vaccine had shown progress for MERS, it meant it was time to adjust it for COVID-19. This article, demonstrates the importance of having a similar virus to do test trials on. This model helped speed up the process of creating a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19. By having some work done ahead of time through MERS, researchers were able to specifically adapt to the COVID-19 virus which helped save millions of lives. Isn’t that crazy to think about??

COVID-19 and Cardiac Deaths?

What’s the meaning of all of this though? Well, it means we were able to save millions of lives by rolling out a vaccine early. This article estimates that the vaccine was able to prevent 2.5 million deaths (with an upper estimate of 4 million). That’s so incredible! This goes to show just how important being prepared for pandemics and having prep work done for organisms that can teach about new vaccines is.

However, while this seems all fine and dandy, some people are worried about adverse effects of the vaccines. For example, in rare cases, people developed myocarditis after receiving the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. This article published on JAMA reports the incident rate of this occurring was about 50 per million to 100 per million depending on age and sex. While this is unfortunate, the amount of deaths averted seems to be worth it. But what do the experts think? Well, they pretty much overwhelmingly agree with what I just said. Take a look at this CDC article that discusses in terms of cost and benefit, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is safe and worth it. Vaccination is incredibly important for helping reduce the effects of viruses and also developing herd immunity for our communities. So do your part!