Fewer than 1 in 4 people in the U.S. have received last year’s updated COVID-19 vaccine, despite a death toll of more than 23,000 Americans this year.
One of the most common reasons for bypassing the COVID vaccine is concern about side effects like tiredness, muscle and joint pain, chills, headache, fever, nausea and feeling generally unwell. But a new study, led by UC San Francisco, has found that the symptoms indicate a robust immune response that is likely to lessen the chances of infection.
“While the symptoms from vaccination can be very unpleasant, it’s important to remember that they don’t come close to the disease’s potential complications.”
Elissa Epel, PhD
The study, which appears online June 10 in Annals of Internal Medicine, is based on symptom reports and antibody responses from 363 people, who had the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna mRNA vaccines when they were first introduced.
After the second dose of the vaccine, the researchers found that those with seven or more symptoms had nearly double the antibody levels of those who did not have symptoms. The participants were mainly in their forties to sixties and had not had the virus.
About 40% of the people in the study also wore a device to monitor their temperature, breathing and heart rate. The researchers found that those whose skin temperature increased by 1 degree Celsius after the second dose had three times the antibody levels six months later, compared to those whose temperature did not increase.
An absence of side effects does not mean the vaccine is not working
“Generally, we found that the higher the number of side effects, the higher the level of antibodies,” said first author Ethan Dutcher, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “But this wasn’t a hard rule: some people without side effects had better antibodies than some people with side effects.”
As the virus has evolved and fatality rates have fallen, many people are underestimating its impact. “The toll of COVID is still high for some – sickness, lost work, lasting fatigue and the dreaded long COVID,” said co-senior author Elissa Epel, PhD, a vice chair in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “While the symptoms from vaccination can be very unpleasant, it’s important to remember that they don’t come close to the disease’s potential complications,” she said.
“With COVID-19 vaccines likely here to stay, identifying what predicts a strong antibody response will remain important,” said co-senior author Aric Prather, PhD, professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
The latest recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are that everyone 6 months and older should receive the updated vaccine, and those 65 and older should receive an additional dose.
Co-Authors: Ethan Dutcher, MD, PhD; Elissa Epel, PhD; Ashley Mason, PhD; Aric A. Prather, PhD; and Frederick Hecht, MD, of UCSF; James E. Robinson, MD, of Tulane University; and Stacy Drury, MD, PhD, of Tulane University and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Funding: National Institutes of Health (R24AG048024, 5U24AG066528 and U54CA260581).
Disclosures: Epel is on the scientific advisory boards of Meru Health and Oura Health. Mason has receiving consultancy fees from Oura Health. Prather is an advisor to NeuroGeneces and L-New Co.
Read the study
- Annals of Internal Medicine: COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects and Long-Term Neutralizing Antibody Response: A Prospective Cohort Study
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
