Efficacy Evaluation of COVID-19 Vaccines in Patients with Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases in Mashhad, Iran.

Background: Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases (ARDs) patients are at high risk of COVID-19 re-infection even after vaccination. However, since the majority of studies in the related literature are focused on the efficacy of messenger RNA in rheumatic patients, the present study aimed to assess the efficiency of the inactivated whole virus vaccines and viral vector COVID-19 vaccines in rheumatic diseases in Mashhad, Iran. Methods: This prospective cross-sectional study was conducted on ARDs patients who were referred to private clinics and rheumatologic clinics of Ghaem and Imam Reza Hospitals, Mashhad, Iran, during 2021-22. Anti-neutralizing antibodies have been considered to check antibodies of Sinopharm and Barkat vaccines, and an anti-spike antibody was considered to check Sputnik V and AstraZeneca vaccine antibodies. Humoral immunity was investigated using the anti-spike Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and anti-neutralizing antibodies. Results: The obtained results showed that humoral immunity after COVID-19 vaccination was observed in 73.9% of the patients with ARDs. However, humoral immunity was lower in ARDs patients who took tacrolimus and higher in patients with a history of COVID-19 infection (χ² =5.84, p=0.01). The infection after the second COVID-19 vaccination was lower in patients with humoral immunity (χ² =5.69, p=0.01). Conclusion: This study demonstrated that a homologous second dose of an inactivated whole viral vector SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was safe and provided a remarkable antibody response in ARDs patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]