Using Monoclonals

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Anchor lead: Can monoclonal antibodies help transplant patients avoid severe Covid-19? Elizabeth Tracey reports

People who’ve received an organ transplant don’t respond effectively to Covid-19 vaccines, a study by Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues has found. Segev says there is a strategy to help, however.

Segev: In the meantime, if you’re a transplant patient and you’ve gotten vaccinated and you don’t have antibodies, if you are exposed to Covid then certainly post-exposure monoclonal antibody treatment is a very very good option, and one of my hopes is that when pre-exposure prophylaxis becomes more readily available, we’ll be able to use monoclonals for pre-exposure prophylaxis in transplant patients to buy them more time, until we reach herd immunity or otherwise figure out what’s happening immunologically.  :30

Segev says monoclonal antibodies must be administered intravenously, so if you have had a transplant and been exposed to Covid-19, get in touch with your healthcare provider as soon as possible. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.