Explained: Two vaccine doses highly effective across people of different body weights, study suggests | Explained News,The Indian Express
A new study published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology has found that body size was not a factor in the effectiveness of vaccines — two doses are highly effective against severe disease for people who are underweight, overweight, or who have obesity.
Obesity has been identified as a risk factor for severe Covid-19 since early in the pandemic, but little was known until now about the effectiveness of the vaccines for people with obesity. Now a new study published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology has found that body size was not a factor in the effectiveness of vaccines — two doses are highly effective against severe disease for people who are underweight, overweight, or who have obesity. In fact, the benefits were found to be slightly lower among underweight people compared to people with higher body mass index (BMI).
The sample
This is the largest study of BMI and Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness. Carried out in the UK, it covered 9,171,524 adult patients who had BMI data and had not previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2. They were grouped based on their BMI: healthy weight, underweight, overweight and obesity. During the study period from December 8, 2020 (date of the first vaccine given in the UK) to November 17, 2021, over 5.6 lakh of the 9 million participants tested positive. Of those, 32,808 were admitted to hospital and 14,389 died.
At the end of the study period, 23.3% of the healthy weight group, 32.6% of the underweight group, 16.8% of the overweight group and 14.2% of the group with obesity had not received any dose of any vaccine.
The researchers compared risk of severe disease in vaccinated versus unvaccinated people at least 14 days after a second dose. They found that being vaccinated offered high protection across all BMI groups, but the effect differed slightly in different BMI groups.
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