Two doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induce robust immune responses to emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern

The extent to which immune responses to natural infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and immunization with vaccines protect against variants of concern (VOC) is of increasing importance. Accordingly, here we analyse antibodies and T cells of a recently vaccinated, UK cohort, alongside those recovering from natural infection in early 2020. We show that neutralization of the VOC compared to a reference isolate of the original circulating lineage, B, is reduced: more profoundly against B.1.351 than for B.1.1.7, and in responses to infection or a single dose of vaccine than to a second dose of vaccine. Importantly, high magnitude T cell responses are generated after two vaccine doses, with the majority of the T cell response directed against epitopes that are conserved between the prototype isolate B and the VOC. Vaccination is required to generate high potency immune responses to protect against these and other emergent variants

SARS-CoV-2-specific immune responses and clinical outcomes after COVID-19 vaccination in patients with immune-suppressive disease

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) immune responses and infection outcomes were evaluated in 2,686 patients with varying immune-suppressive disease states after administration of two Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines. Overall, 255 of 2,204 (12%) patients failed to develop anti-spike antibodies, with an additional 600 of 2,204 (27%) patients generating low levels (<380 AU ml−1). Vaccine failure rates were highest in ANCA-associated vasculitis on rituximab (21/29, 72%), hemodialysis on immunosuppressive therapy (6/30, 20%) and solid organ transplant recipients (20/81, 25% and 141/458, 31%). SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses were detected in 513 of 580 (88%) patients, with lower T cell magnitude or proportion in hemodialysis, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and liver transplant recipients (versus healthy controls). Humoral responses against Omicron (BA.1) were reduced, although cross-reactive T cell responses were sustained in all participants for whom these data were available. BNT162b2 was associated with higher antibody but lower cellular responses compared to ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination. We report 474 SARS-CoV-2 infection episodes, including 48 individuals with hospitalization or death from COVID-19. Decreased magnitude of both the serological and the T cell response was associated with severe COVID-19. Overall, we identified clinical phenotypes that may benefit from targeted COVID-19 therapeutic strategies

Cognitive Workload Assessment Based on the Tensorial Treatment of EEG Estimates of Cross-Frequency Phase Interactions

10.1007/s10439-014-1143-0Annals of Biomedical Engineering434977-98

Structural and Functional Neuroimaging of Polygenic Risk for Schizophrenia: A Recall-by-Genotype–Based Approach

Risk profile scores (RPS) derived from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) explain a considerable amount of susceptibility for schizophrenia (SCZ). However, little is known about how common genetic risk factors for SCZ influence the structure and function of the human brain, largely due to the constraints of imaging sample sizes. In the current study, we use a novel recall-by-genotype (RbG) methodological approach, where we sample young adults from a population cohort (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children: N genotyped = 8365) based on their SCZ-RPS. We compared 197 healthy individuals at extremes of low (N = 99) or high (N = 98) SCZ-RPS with behavioral tests, and structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We first provide methodological details that will inform the design of future RbG studies for common SCZ genetic risk. We further provide an between group analysis of the RbG individuals (low vs high SCZ-RPS) who underwent structural neuroimaging data (T1—weighted scans) and fMRI data during a reversal learning task. While we found little evidence for morphometric differences between the low and high SCZ-RPS groups, we observed an impact of SCZ-RPS on blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal during reward processing in the ventral striatum (PFWE-VS-CORRECTED = .037), a previously investigated broader reward-related network (PFWE-ROIS-CORRECTED = .008), and across the whole brain (PFWE-WHOLE-BRAIN-CORRECTED = .013). We also describe the study strategy and discuss specific challenges of RbG for SCZ risk (such as SCZ-RPS related homoscedasticity). This study will help to elucidate the behavioral and imaging phenotypes that are associated with SCZ genetic risk