Patients on infliximab or tofacitinib for inflammatory bowel disease have weaker immune responses to COVID-19 vaccines and should be prioritized for booster shots, UK clinicians warn.

The magnitude of reduction in antibody response following a primary course of vaccination was particularly striking in those treated with the anti-TNF therapy, results from their prospective case-control study suggest.

In the first systematic study of its kind, the Imperial College London-led team compared COVID-19 vaccine-induced humoral responses in some 360 adults receiving common immunosuppressives for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) with 120 healthy controls.

Three-quarters of the cohort had no prior SARS-CoV-2 infection and all participants had received two doses of either the AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna vaccine 6-12 weeks apart.