Immunogenicity and Safety of Vaccines in General Population and Immunocompromised Individuals

Dear Colleagues,

Vaccination is currently one of the most effective tools to prevent the spread of infectious diseases prevention. Vaccines elicit a host’s immune response via a variety of immunological mechanisms, granting protection for longer or shorter periods depending on various factors. Modern vaccinology aims to identify the antigens that are most likely to determine a long-lasting effective immune response, while also making sure that released products are safe for usage in a large population. As of now, however, pre-marketing clinical studies cannot be considered perfectly accurate in designing vaccines’ safety profiles as they are conducted in selected populations. Despite several real-world studies showing successful immunogenicity and safety of vaccines in immunocompetent people, there are limited data on vaccine effectiveness for patients who are immunocompromised or affected by chronic conditions.

Therefore, it is imperative to follow a two-track road: on one hand, there must be continuous research into developing new products with better performance; on the other, we must perform close-up post-marketing surveillance of adverse events following immunization (AEFIs) for safety analysis.

This Research Topic will focus on vaccine safety and immunogenicity in the general population and in subgroups at increased risk of vaccine-preventable diseases. In presenting this publication, we also aim to evaluate the main determinants of vaccine attitude and the required strategies to deal with vaccination hesitancy, especially in the high-risk subgroups (such as, but not limited to, healthcare workers, pregnancy women and immunocompromised or chronic patients).

Just as an example, rheumatic patients are at an increased risk of infections due to various factors, including aberrant immune response due to neutrophil margination and constricted T-cell receptor repertoire, in addition to eventual accompanying comorbidities such as chronic kidney disease and diabetes, uncontrolled disease activity, and immunosuppressive drug usage such as steroids and disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs).

Assessing vaccine immunogenicity in such patients is of utmost importance for providing proper disease management.

Dr. Pasquale Stefanizzi
Dr. Vincenza Gianfredi
Dr. Vincenzo Venerito
Guest Editors

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• AEFIs
• causality assessment
• post-marketing
• hesitancy
• effectiveness
• rheumatic diseases
• DMARDs