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Review
. 2024 Aug;23(4):339-343.
doi: 10.1016/j.hbpd.2023.08.010. Epub 2023 Aug 12.

Clinical application of COVID-19 vaccine in liver transplant recipients

Feng-Chao Liu  1 , Man Xie  2 , Wei Rao  3
Affiliations
Review

Clinical application of COVID-19 vaccine in liver transplant recipients

Feng-Chao Liu et al. Hepatobiliary Pancreat Dis Int. 2024 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Solid organ transplant (SOT) activities, such as liver transplant, have been greatly influenced by the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Immunosuppressed individuals of liver transplant recipients (LTRs) tend to have a high risk of COVID-19 infection and related complications. Therefore, COVID-19 vaccination has been recommended to be administered as early as possible in LTRs.

Data sources: The keywords "liver transplant", "SARS-CoV-2", and "vaccine" were used to retrieve articles published in PubMed.

Results: The antibody response following the 1st and 2nd doses of vaccination was disappointingly low, and the immune responses among LTRs remarkably improved after the 3rd or 4th dose of vaccination. Although the 3rd or 4th dose of COVID-19 vaccine increased the antibody titer, a proportion of patients remained unresponsive. Furthermore, recent studies showed that SARS-CoV-2 vaccine could trigger adverse events in LTRs, including allograft rejection and liver injury.

Conclusions: This review provides the recently reported data on the antibody response of LTRs following various doses of vaccine, risk factors for poor serological response and adverse events after vaccination.

Keywords: Antibody response; COVID-19; Liver transplant; SARS-CoV-2; Vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interest No benefits in any form have been received or will be received from a commercial party related directly or indirectly to the subject of this article.

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