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Comment by throwawayboise | Hacker News Reader

And how much antibody response is enough? Is more always better? Or is it diminishing returns?

IIRC one of the tricky things in the development of mRNA vaccines was being careful to not overstimulate the immune systems, triggering autoimmune types of reactions.

It seems plausible to me that there is a "safe" level of immune response, and either too much or too little could be less desirable (maybe for different reasons).

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This is exactly what they are finding.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.03.21256520v...

The Pfizer vaccine is shown here to elicit increased cytokine immune response to many types of non-covid agitants like mold and bacteria. The danger there would be cytokine storm in the extreme or cytokine-induced inflammation in mild cases.

Might be chance (it is spring) but my allergies were rocked after the shots. I wonder if revving up your immune system also revs up allergies since they're just an immune over-response?

Fascinating - that was my experience as well. But I can't say whether it's just been an especially bad allergy season in general.

It hadn't occurred to me that the two could be related, but my allergies were pretty quiet until I got the first shot, then it was like I'd just motorboated a vase full of pollen.

Again, could just be timing.

Second shot in a week, so we'll see if it happens again!

I was hammered by allergies before I had any shots. After the second shot my allergies got a lot better. Probably totally cured my allergies. Magic.

Except it didn't because past week or so they've been back again.

The second Pfizer shot made my allergies better for about two days. They're back :(

Could it be because the immune system is busy with something else than fighting harmless agents ?

It’s a known strategy.

One guy infested himself with various worms to give his immune system something productive to do.

I myself didn’t really eat for a month once. That ended a multi month long flare. Idea is it kills off immune system for awhile.

Your body has a lot of possible immune responses. Runny nose, inflammation, fever. My guess is that it just switches strategies to something less annoying.

cmon guys it's mid may, it's peak grass pollen season (in the northern hemisphere)... that has nothing to do with vaccines. smh, anectdotal this, anectdotal that

Anecdotal, yes: I've never had allergies before (at least not ones I acknowledged) and now that I'm fully vaccinated, I've got crazy responses. Interesting nonetheless.

Are you saying you not only had an allergic response afterwards, but that your new allergies persist to this day? If so, very interesting. I wonder if a severely-heightened immune response could cause your body to sensitize to otherwise harmless agents if the conditions are right?

Which shot did you get? The different vaccines also use different adjuvants (or even none in case of BionTech), so maybe that also plays a role.

It is worth noting that cytokine responcse is implicated in many models of dementia, including alzheimer's. It is terrifing to imagine senarios where this leads to a billion early onset cases a few decades from now

Normal Covid infection apparently causes cytokine storms as well, so maybe there was no escaping it assuming every individual would eventually either have Covid or get the vaccine.

I hate to even say this, but maybe it's possible that excessive vaccinations increase mental diseases in the elderly?

and too few vaccinations increases fatal sickness for the elderly.

Or just a general lack of elderly

Why are you asking this? This seems fairly out of left field.

not to worry ! Lots of cytokine inhibiting drugs on the market, like anti-tnf drugs and anti-IL biologic drugs. All for the low price of about $5-10k/month. Ask your doctor about ustekinumab/adalimumab/vedolizumab. May cause cancer, demyelination and death.

As pointed out by the preprint, the same effect is observed in serval other common vaccines (BCG, Measles, etc.)

Trial data for the mRNA vaccines has not yet indicated an elevated risk of experiencing a cytokine storm.

There’s really not much to get excited about here.

If the infection model of Alzheimer's Disease is correct, then it might actually provide a protective effect.

Related to this, vaccinations are correlated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's:

https://www.alz.org/aaic/releases_2020/vaccines-dementia-ris...

Would this manifest as increased side effects from the vaccine?

I'd also be curious to hear about an expert weigh in on "original antigenic sin" in this context. (My lay understanding: your immune system gets partially locked onto its first response to an antigen, and may fail to respond as well as it could to future variants).

If you power up the response to massive levels, does it also augment the downsides of that "original antigenic sin"?

Yes, this is why I’m curious whether the MRNA interacts badly with pregnancy, since pregnancy involves a poorly understood modulation of the immune system (so it doesn’t attack the fetus)

And GI function, which affects us all, every day.

The data on pregnancy shows no impact. In fact if I remember correctly there were fewer incidents than the placebo group. So maybe it helps reduce pregnancy related issues??

For a statement written with such apparent certainty, a link to a study (or any similar substantiation) would be pretty useful

There are multiple studies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/health/vaccine-pregnancy....

And from Pfizer and Moderna's research: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-01-27/covid-19-va...

There is now a large trial of pregnant women getting the vaccinces. So far no evidence to suggest it is problematic.

Hmm, the first trial is just 103 women, the second one is 84. Wow wait, the Pfizer one was _12_ women and Moderna was 13. I'd be more convinced when a more comprehensive trial with thousands of participants is done. Still, thanks for the links!

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