Immunogenicity and durability of COVD-19 vaccines in persons living with human immunodeficiency virus

Despite the effectiveness of antiretroviral drug treatment, persons living with HIV (PLWH) can have weakened immune systems that respond poorly to vaccination, compared to the general population. Little is known about how PLWH respond to the novel mRNA or viral vector-based vaccines developed against COVID-19 . As they may be more prone to develop severe infection, it is important to determine how well the vaccines work and how long vaccine-induced immunity lasts in PLWH. If there is a weaker response to the vaccines in PLWH, this would indicate that additional doses and more frequent boosting may be required to provide adequate protection. We will study the responses of approximately 200 PLWH who received matched or unmatched COVID-19 vaccines to find out what factors related to HIV infection affect responsiveness to the vaccination and the need for additional vaccine doses.