Feeling sick after getting the COVID-19 vaccine or booster is a very good thing, in response to a recent study.
Published within the peer-reviewed journal JAMA last week, the study checked out the self-reported symptoms of older American adults who received the COVID-19 booster.
Previous research focused on vaccine reactogenicity and immunogenicity and didn’t tackle the association between postvaccination symptoms and vaccine-induced antibody response.
For the brand new study, the team observed the self-reported postvaccination symptoms with anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody response among the many participants.
Data showed that those that reported more symptoms after receiving an mRNA booster dose showed a “greater antibody response” than those that felt nothing or simply experienced soreness on the injection site.
Nearly all participants exhibited a positive antibody response to the mRNA vaccines. But only those that reported systemic symptoms demonstrated an amazing immune response to the shots.
Based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the common unwanted effects of the COVID-19 vaccine include pain on the injection site, tiredness, headache, chills, muscle pain, swollen lymph nodes, nausea and fever.
After a second shot or booster, essentially the most commonly reported symptoms are narrowed all the way down to fever, headache, fatigue and pain on the injection site.
While stronger unwanted effects are indicative of the immune system working, an absence thereof doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t any immune response.
“I don’t need a patient to inform me that, ‘Golly, I didn’t get any response, my arm wasn’t sore, I didn’t have [a] fever. The vaccine didn’t work,’” Dr. William Schaffner told CNN.
The infectious diseases expert and professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center continued, “That is more to reassure individuals who have had a response that that’s their immune system responding, actually in a quite great way, to the vaccine, despite the fact that it has caused them some discomfort.”