The Istituto Superiore di Sanità and the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics (Sigg) have just launched the GeroVAX study to evaluate the efficacy, safety and duration of anti-Covid-19 vaccinations in nursing homes, on the most fragile elderly in whom the response immune system could be impaired or lower.
Over 2500 elderly people already involved in 60 facilities in Veneto, Lombardy, Liguria, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio, Campania, Puglia, Calabria and Sicily to record any adverse reactions to the vaccine, but above all its effectiveness, monitoring new cases of Covid -19, access to the emergency room, hospital admissions and mortality in the 12 months following vaccination. Therefore, on a sample of 779 elderly people, the production of antibodies will be evaluated before the vaccine and at 2, 6 and 12 months after the first dose. In 40 patients the cell-mediated immune response will also be measured at 12 months after the vaccine. In this way it will be possible to estimate the duration of vaccination protection in the most vulnerable elderly.
The survey aims to involve 5,000 residents in 90 RSAs of 10 Italian regions, part of the network of the GeroCovid RSA project promoted by SIGG as part of a larger observational multicentre study, unique in Europe, born last March to collect data on the real situation of the elderly most exposed to the Covid threat.
“The distribution of the anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccine has been planned to cover, as a priority, the RSAs, which have been hit hard by the Covid-19 emergency – he explains Graziano Below, promoter of the GeroVAX project and Director of the Cardiovascular, Endocrine-Metabolic and Aging Diseases Department, ISS – To date, there are no data on the clinical efficacy and duration of vaccine protection in residents of these facilities, a particular population in which the immune response to vaccine could be altered by the high clinical fragility “.
The study will involve RSA throughout the national territory, part of the network of SIGG’s GeroCovid RSA project. “The GeroCovid RSA investigation was launched when the cases of RSA overwhelmed by the emergency multiplied, surveyed in May by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in a national report on the infection from Covid – explains Raffaele Antonelli Incalzi, coordinator of the GeroVAX project for SIGG – The use of an existing network offers clear advantages in terms of time, organization and management and simplifies the already active data collection system, thanks to the support of BlueCompanion which has created a technological infrastructure that allows the entry and direct data storage, in absolute anonymity and security. Participation in the new ISS study is a further effort in the direction of better understanding the extent of the disease in the nursing care setting and above all defining the effectiveness of vaccination protection, filling gaps in knowledge that are fundamental for the correct management of the older population. vulnerable”Concludes Antonelli Incalzi.
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