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Barnes, E., Goodyear, C.S., Willicombe, M., Gaskell, C., Siebert, S., I de Silva, T., et al. (2023) SARS-CoV-2-Specific Immune Responses and Clinical Outcomes after COVID-19 Vaccination in Patients with Immune-Suppressive Disease. Nature Medicine, 29, 1760-1774.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02414-4

has been cited by the following article:

• TITLE: Studying the Imprinting Effect in Cohort Studies of Covid Vaccines

  AUTHORS: Eyal Shahar

  KEYWORDS: Immune Imprinting, Colliding Bias, Selection Bias, Interaction

  JOURNAL NAME: Open Journal of Epidemiology, Vol.15 No.3, August 15, 2025

  ABSTRACT: Immune imprinting denotes a phenomenon where previous exposure to a viral antigen, through infection or vaccination, imprints that antigen in immunological memory. When the immune system is exposed to a new strain or a new variant, part of the response targets the historical antigen(s), and the fight against the new offender is less effective. It was recently argued that observational studies that show evidence of immune imprinting by prior vaccination reflect colliding (selection) bias, not imprinting. The collider is a first infection, and the two causes are vaccination and susceptibility to infection. As will be explained, the claim is not uniformly valid, nor can it be verified or refuted based on a construct called susceptibility. Moreover, if the bias is significant at all, underestimation of the true effect of immune imprinting is equally possible.