Comment on: mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in patients after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation.

Dear Editor,

We would like to share ideas on the publication “Antibody response to mRNA SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccination in 182 patients after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation.” While cases undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation were excluded from the initial registration trials, Beerlage et al. stated that “our real‐world experience with a large patient cohort confirms the data of previous studies, showing that the majority of patients have a good response to mRNA‐vaccines against SARS‐CoV‐2.” Despite immunosuppressive medication, a large proportion of patients have insufficient vaccination, which can be improved in most cases after a third vaccine. We agree that the immune response to COVID‐19 vaccine among patients after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation might be different from general healthy population. The current study by Beerlage et al. might showed that a level of immune response is detected after vaccination. The important concern is on the confounding effect of the asymptomatic COVID‐19. The asymptomatic COVID‐19 is a common problem and there is no specific protocol to rule out prevaccination and postvaccination asymptomatic COVID‐19 among study transplant recipients. Whether the observed immune parameter is a result of confounding asymptomatic COVID‐19 is an interesting question.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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