Moderna's potential treatment for COVID generated a strong immune reaction in older subjects during initial clinical tests without triggering severe side effects, a medical report on a two-shot regimen currently being trialed on around 30,000 participants in advance-phase research showed.
Two shots of the vaccine - in 25 micrograms or 100 mcg 28 days apart – were administered to each of the 40 volunteers, 56 to 70 years of age and above. All of the subjects developed neutralizing antibodies to the disease – the type of immune cells widely viewed as the most effective in containing the pathogen and preventing it from harming the human cells.
Dr. Evan Anderson, one of the trials lead experts from Emory University in Atlanta, said in a telephone interview that the clinical results are encouraging because immunity tends to slow down as people get older.
Moderna's research was an augmentation of the biotech's Phase I safety tests first carried out in 18- to 55-year old subjects. Moderna is collaborating with the National Institutes of Health in its latest experimental COVID vaccine study.
The Massachusetts-based biotech group is currently testing a higher dosage treatment in the third-stage test at 100 facilities across the United States.
Half of the estimated 30,000 participants will be given the shot and the other half injected with a placebo, according to Moderna's website. The candidate vaccine is one of 11 being developed by pharmaceutical firms in advance-phase tests.
Nearly 80 percent of those who have perished from the virus are older, making the effectiveness and safety of potential treatments against the disease in aging populations very crucial. "The immune response to many other vaccines has been shown to decrease with increasing age," the NIH-led researchers disclosed, as reported by CNN.
With the U.S. election just around the corner – and President Donald Trump floating the probability of an FDA-approved vaccine – worries are mounting with regards to the safety of hastily-produced COVID drugs.
Overall, the researchers at Moderna determined that in older subjects who were given two shots of the 100 mcg dose in a 28-day interval, the vaccine generated immune reactions almost the same as those seen in younger participants.
