The Ramifications of COVID-19 on Organ Transplants
Covid-19, the plot twist of the decade, has impacted everyone’s lives in ways that we can’t even imagine. Activities were shut down, education went online, and the world flipped upside down. Nearly every area of life was visibly hampered, but one aspect that wasn’t in the headlines was the organ transplant community. The Covid-19 impact on the organ transplant community is best explained through kidney transplant recipients. When an individual has a kidney transplant, they go through a therapy process afterwards. Unfortunately, this process creates immunosuppression, which reduces the overall activity of the immune system. Generally, there are ways to offset this against common diseases and illnesses, but the pandemic presented a whole new problem.
The Covid-19 mRNA vaccine is designed to give individuals immunity to the virus. However, the immunosuppression from post-transplant therapy impairs one's ability to develop immunity. Naturally, this means that organ transplant recipients are more susceptible to the risks of Covid.
The way the vaccine works on these individuals is, put simply, that it doesn’t. Being immunosuppressed means that their bodies are unable to develop immunity, even if an individual is vaccinated. This means that these individuals need a more intense vaccine approach, be constantly observed, and have special treatment, all of which isn’t readily available to everyone. The primary risk is that there is no right answer as to whether or not an intense approach will provide more immunity, so there is hesitancy to experiment.
The impact of Covid-19 on these specific individuals is much worse than the average person. It’s common knowledge that immunocompromised individuals have a higher chance of catching the virus. But for these individuals, it’s not only easier to get, but much more devastating if they do contract the virus. All of this means that the organ transplant community has a huge risk of dying, with no clear remedy.
On the whole, Covid-19 is not predictable. We could wake up to a new variant tomorrow, one that attacks an individual in a way never seen before. The uncertainty means that more variables will always be added to the equation, in the forms of booster shots, quarantine, and anything in between. This is devastating for the organ transplant community because more uncertainty means less focus on a specific vaccination process that will help their immunity. At the end of the day, the community has done a wonderful job of sticking together and remaining hopeful while more research is done.