Anti-Interleukin-1 Therapy Does Not Affect the Response to SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination and Infection in Patients with Systemic Autoinflammatory Diseases

Abstract

Patients with systemic autoinflammatory diseases (sAIDs) are a section of the population at high risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes, but evidence on the efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in this group of patients is scarce. To investigate the efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in patients with sAIDs receiving interleukin-1 (IL-1) inhibition is important. Vaccination and infection responses from 100 sAID patients and 100 healthy controls (HCs) were analyzed. In total, 98% of patients were treated with IL-1 inhibitors at the time of vaccination (n = 98). After the second SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, sAID patients showed similar anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses (mean (standard deviation (SD)): 6.7 (2.7)) compared to HCs (5.7 (2.4)) as well as similar neutralizing antibodies (85.1 ± 22.9% vs. 82.5 ± 19.7%). Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses and neutralizing antibodies were similar in sAID patients after SARS-CoV-2 infection and double vaccination. Furthermore, while antibodies increased after the first and second vaccination in sAID patients, they did not further increase after the third and fourth vaccination. No difference was found in antibody responses between anakinra and anti-IL-1 antibody treatment and the additional use of colchicine or other drugs did not impair vaccination responses. Primary and booster SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations led to protective antibody responses in sAID patients, which were at the same level of vaccination responses in HCs and in sAID patients after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Immunomodulatory treatments used in sAID do not seem to affect antibody responses to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

Keywords

• autoinflammatory diseases
• SARS-CoV-2
• vaccination
• familial Mediterranean fever
• adult-onset Still’s disease
• cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome