The Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has received a $1.3 million grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to support the work of Parakkal Deepak, MBBS, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, and Alfred H.J. Kim, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology.
The funded project will assess the quality, quantity and durability of antibody responses after vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 in patients with inflammatory bowel disease and other autoimmune diseases. Because patients with IDB often require immunosuppressive medications that have been shown to have a negative impact on the antibody responses to vaccines against influenza, streptococcus pneumonia and hepatitis B, there is concern that those medications also may make COVID-19 vaccines less effective.
