Millions of people worldwide undergoing immune-suppressing treatment would respond much better to Covid-19 vaccines if they took a two-week break from medication immediately after their jab, a UK clinical trial has shown.
An academic consortium led by Nottingham university investigated the effect of stopping treatment with methotrexate, the most widely prescribed treatment for inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, for a fortnight after receiving a third dose of Covid vaccine.
Levels of protective antibodies that recognise spike proteins in the Sars-Cov-2 virus were more than twice as high in those who paused methotrexate after vaccination than in the control group that continued treatment. The findings are published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.