Moderna Inc.’s Covid vaccine generated more than double the antibodies of a similar shot made by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE in research that compared immune responses evoked by the two inoculations.
The study is one of the first to compare levels of antibodies produced by the two vaccines, which are thought to be one of the important components of the immune response. It didn’t examine whether the antibody differences led to a difference in efficacy over time between the two shots, which both were more than 90% effective in final-stage clinical trials.
The research looked at antibody levels against the coronavirus spike protein in about 1,600 workers at a major Belgium hospital system whose blood samples were analyzed 6 to 10 weeks after vaccination. The participants hadn’t been infected with the coronavirus before getting vaccinated. Levels among those who got two doses of the Moderna vaccine averaged 2,881 units per milliliter, compared with 1,108 units per milliliter amon.
The results, published in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested the differences might be explained by the higher amount of active ingredient in the Moderna vaccine -- 100 micrograms, versus 30 micrograms in Pfizer-BioNTech -- or the slightly longer interval between doses of the Moderna vaccine -- four weeks, versus three weeks for Pfizer-BioNTech.
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