Patients vaccinated against COVID-19 who caught the virus — and were hospitalized with reduced kidney function — had better outcomes than unvaccinated patients with the same conditions, a new study has found.
Vaccinated patients were less likely to need dialysis after being discharged from the hospital and were more likely to survive, according to the study.
“The COVID-19 vaccine is an important intervention that can decrease the chances of developing complications from the COVID-19 infection in patients hospitalized with acute kidney injuries,” Nobakht said in a news release.
Of those patients, 972 developed acute kidney injury, which is a sudden reduction in kidney function, with 411 who were unvaccinated against COVID-19 and 467 who were vaccinated.
Vaccinated patients received either at least two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
According to a recent study, patients who received the COVID-19 vaccine and contracted the virus—and were admitted to the hospital with impaired kidney function—performed better than those who did not receive the vaccination.
The study found that vaccinated patients had a higher chance of surviving and were less likely to require dialysis after being released from the hospital.
The results imply that the COVID-19 vaccination can lower the risk of death and long-term decline in kidney function, according to lead author Dr. Niloofar Nobakht, a health sciences clinical associate professor of medicine in the division of nephrology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
“The COVID-19 vaccine is a crucial intervention that can reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection-related complications in patients hospitalized with acute kidney injuries,” Nobakht stated in a press release.
“People should talk to their doctors about the advantages of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 because it can reduce the likelihood of needing dialysis, which can significantly impair patients’ quality of life and cause additional complications, including death,” she added.
Researchers examined roughly 3,500 patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19 between March 1, 2020, and March 30, 2022 for the study, which was published early Friday in the journal Kidney Medicine.
Acute kidney injury, or a sudden decline in kidney function, occurred in 972 of those patients, 411 of whom were not vaccinated against COVID-19 and 467 of whom were. In addition to one dose of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, vaccinated patients received at least two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.
In contrast to approximately 11% of vaccinated patients, nearly 16% of unvaccinated patients required continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT), a type of dialysis that is continuous, slow-motion, and operates around the clock.
According to the results, patients who were not vaccinated had a 5.54-fold higher chance of dying in the hospital and a 2.56-fold higher chance of requiring CRRT after being released from the hospital.
Additionally, during long-term follow-up, the risk of death was 4–78 times higher for those who were not vaccinated.
For better patient outcomes, Nobakht stated, “this study also highlights the importance of the need for ongoing research in understanding how COVID-19 infections affect the kidney and how we should manage and monitor kidney complications from COVID-19 infections.”.
The lack of information on the severity of COVID-19 illness was one of the study’s limitations, according to the authors. However, the team did observe that every patient was sufficiently sick to necessitate hospitalization.
The new study was conducted at a time when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s recent actions have brought COVID-19 vaccines back into the spotlight. Kennedy, Jr.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization schedule for “healthy children and pregnant women” will no longer include COVID-19 vaccines, Kennedy announced last month. “.
Kennedy also dismissed the 17 current members of the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory committee earlier this week and replaced them with eight new members, some of whom hold similar vaccine-skeptic beliefs.
