TNF inhibitors, corticosteroids do not impact COVID-19 vaccine efficacy for IBD patients
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Among patients with inflammatory bowel disease, the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine was similar when compared to controls without the disease, according to study results.
“[We] found that COVID-19 BNT162b2 vaccine was equally effective in IBD patients and in the non-IBD population, including those on TNF inhibitors and corticosteroids, and likely did not increase the risk of IBD exacerbation,” Raffi Lev-Tzion, MD, of The Juliet Keidan Institute of Pediatric Gastroenterology Hepatology and Nutrition at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Israel, and colleagues wrote.
Lev-Tzion and colleagues matched 4,946 patients with IBD who were insured in two out of four Israeli HMOs and received two Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 vaccine doses between December 2020 and June 2021 to 4,946 non-IBD controls. The cohort pairs were matched for age (mean age, 51 years), sex (49% men), jurisdiction of residence, HMO and vaccination date. The median follow-up was 22 weeks.
In each group, there were 15 patients who developed COVID-19 after being vaccinated (OR = 1; 95% CI, 0.49-2.05). Lev-Tzion and colleagues noted a higher incidence of infection was not observed in patients on tumor necrosis factor inhibitors and/or corticosteroids.
In addition, investigators compared 707 vaccinated IBD patients with unvaccinated IBD patients with a matching follow-up of 14 weeks. In vaccinated patients, the risk of exacerbation was 29% vs. 26% in the unvaccinated patients.
“Our findings support those of the two previous studies that addressed real-world COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness for preventing infection in patients on anti-TNF medication; neither study found increased COVID-19 incidence in these patients,” the authors wrote.
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