Vaccine Efficacy and Safety in People with Kidney Diseases/Kidney Transplant Recipients

Dear Colleagues,

The COVID-19 pandemic unmasked the impact of extrinsic immunosuppression, as in kidney transplant recipients, or intrinsic immunosuppression, as in ESRD patients with chronic inflammation and immune senescence with exceptionally high lethality. Immunocompromised cohorts with kidney diseases (e.g., hemodialysis patients, peritoneal dialysis patients, kidney transplant recipients, patients with systemic autoimmune diseases etc.) have a significantly impaired SARS-CoV-2 vaccine response compared with healthy subjects, even to new mRNA vaccines. Major efforts have been made to increase humoral and cellular immunity, even against variants with immune escape, via different booster vaccinations. These include mRNA vaccines, as well as heterologous vaccination regimens. During the last year, a decisive contribution has been made to protect particularly vulnerable patient collectives from severe COVID-19 courses as effectively, safely, and promptly as possible. In addition, knowledge from different COVID-19 vaccine trials is valuable for the role it plays in generating information for optimizing the effectiveness of vaccination in collectives with kidney diseases beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

The initial mRNA vaccines were based on the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. With the upcoming different Omicron variants characterized by immune escape, novel vaccination strategies, including adapted mRNA vaccines against epitopes of emerging variants, are needed to protect high-risk individuals. However, further research is needed to fully understand the efficacy and safety of these bivalent vaccines against emerging variants. This Special Issue specifically welcomes (1) the submission of manuscripts that address efficacy, immunogenicity, and long-term immune response after bivalent COVID-19 vaccination, and (2) studies of non-COVID-19 vaccines that examine humoral and cellular immunity to various vaccines in immunocompromised individuals with kidney disease.

Dr. Claudius Speer
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• vaccines
• mRNA vaccines
• kidney transplant recipients
• immunosuppression
• biomarkers
• dialysis