{"doi":"10.1101/2021.12.06.471455","title":"Loss of Neutralizing Antibody Response to mRNA Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 Variants: Differing Kinetics and Strong Boosting by Breakthrough Infection","abstract":"The waning efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines combined with the continued emergence of variants resistant to vaccine-induced immunity has reignited debate over the need for booster vaccines. To address this, we examined the neutralizing antibody (nAb) response against four major SARS-CoV-2 variants-D614G, Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351), and Delta (B.1.617.2)-in health care workers (HCWs) at pre-vaccination, post-first and post-second mRNA vaccine dose, and six months post-second mRNA vaccine dose. Neutralizing antibody titers against all variants, especially the Delta variant, declined dramatically from four weeks to six months post-second mRNA vaccine dose. Notably, SARS-CoV-2 infection enhanced vaccine durability, and mRNA-1273 vaccinated HCWs also exhibited ~2-fold higher nAb titers than BNT162b2 vaccinated HCWs. Together these results demonstrate possible waning of protection from infection against SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant based on decreased nAb titers, dependent on COVID-19 status and the mRNA vaccine received.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":214281,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":11,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9658,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":278002,"name":"Cong Zeng","orcid":"0000-0003-4423-3634","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":243261,"name":"Claire Carlin","orcid":"0000-0002-8344-0575","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":278008,"name":"Gerard Lozanski","orcid":"0000-0002-5095-0456","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":227281,"name":"Linda J. Saif","orcid":"0000-0002-3224-9009","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":244459,"name":"Eugene M. Oltz","orcid":"0000-0002-2513-7156","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":629721,"name":"Richard J. Gumina","orcid":"0000-0001-8298-1129","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":278009,"name":"Shan‐Lu Liu","orcid":"0000-0003-1620-3817","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":278003,"name":"John P. Evans","orcid":"0000-0001-8644-5825","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":22,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:52:46.604690Z","pmid":"34909777","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}