Response to three doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine: a retrospective study of a cohort of haemodialysis patients in France

The mortality rate associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is high among haemodialyzed patients. We sought to describe the serological status of haemodialysis patients having received up to three doses of BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine, and to identify factors associated with a poor humoral response.

We performed a retrospective, observational study of patients attending a dialysis centre in Antibes, France. One or two of each patient’s monthly venous blood samples were assayed for anti–spike (S1) immunoglobulin G (IgG).

We included 142 patients, of whom 124 remained COVID-19-negative throughout the study. Among these COVID-19-negative patients, the humoral immune response rate (defined as an anti-S1 IgG titre ≥1.2 U/ml) was 82.9% after two injections and 95.8% after three injections, and the median [interquartile range] titre increased significantly from 7.09 [2.21; 19.94] U/ml with two injections to 93.26 [34.25; 176.06] U/ml with three. Among patients with two injections, the mean body mass index and serum albumin levels were significantly higher in responders than in non-responders (26.5 kg/m² vs. 23.2 kg/m², p = 0.0392; and 41.9 g/l vs. 39.0 g/l, p = 0.0042, respectively). For the study population as a whole at the end of the study, a history of COVID-19, at least two vaccine doses, and being on the French national waiting list for kidney transplantation were the only factors independently associated with the anti-S1 IgG titre.

Dialysis patients vaccinated with two doses of BNT162b2 might not be sufficiently protected against SARS-CoV-2 and so should receive a third (booster) dose.

The present retrospective study of clinical practice was not interventional and so was not registered.