Covid, the case of the man who was vaccinated 217 times: what effects of hypervaccination

The case of a man is causing a lot of discussion German man who has been vaccinated 217 times against Covid. The news is not at all fake news as it might seem, and indeed it was confirmed by the Lancet, which published the results of a research conducted starting from this very singular case.

The 62-year-old man from Magdeburg, Germany, is overvaccinated against Covid after having “deliberately and for private reasons” received 217 vaccinations against SARS-CoV-2, in a period of approximately 29 months, 2 and a half years. The hypervaccination – explain the Lancet researchers – occurred outside the context of a clinical trial and against national vaccination recommendations.

But let’s try to better understand this man’s story, why he was vaccinated so many times and above all what effects this hypervaccination generated.

Man gets vaccinated 217 times against Covid

The man, German, was vaccinated 217 times against Covid. Prosecutors in Magdeburg, Germany, confirmed that the man received 130 vaccines in 9 months and opened an investigation into this case on suspicion of fraud, but no criminal charges were filed.

After reading the news about this story, he scientists from the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) they wanted to study how vaccinations might affect his immune system. The research was published in the Lancet.

The man, who told researchers he had experienced no side effects from the injections, volunteered to provide blood and saliva samples and allowed them to extract his health data so they could better understand what effect triggered the hypervaccination on your immune system. Also during the analysis, the man requested and received two more injections, against the advice of the study researchers.

FAU research published in Lancet

The researchers investigated the immunological consequences of hypervaccination in this situation defined by the scientists themselves as “unique”. “It was not clear in which direction the 200 vaccinations would go,” explained Dr. Kilian Schober, lead author of the study and head of the research team at FAU’s Erlangen Institute for Clinical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene.

During the entire hypervaccination program, the patient did not report any side effects related to vaccination. From November 2019 to October 2023, 62 routine clinical chemistry parameters showed no abnormalities attributable to hypervaccination. Furthermore, he had no signs of past SARS-CoV-2 infection, as indicated by repeatedly negative SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests.

Schober and his team compared human immune responses, measured by levels of antibodies in the blood, the first line of defense against a virus, and levels of T cells, responsible for the body’s long-term response, with those of a control group of 29 people: people who had received 3 injections of the anti-Covid vaccine.

While the scientific world is studying the effects of Long Covid, what German experts have discovered is that the level of human memory T cells, responsible for remembering the viruses by which a person has been infected and for reconstituting the overall population of T cells in the immune system was more or less the same as that of the control group. “This made sense,” Schober explained, because memory T cells are reactivated when the body sees the same virus again. “But it was interesting for us to actually see it proven by the data.”

What effects did hypervaccination from Covid cause?

According to repeated negative tests for Covid, confirmed by researchers by the fact that his immune system “showed no sign of having already faced the virus”, probably humans have never been infected by SARS-CoV-2. But Schober cautioned against assuming that his over-vaccinated status was responsible for protecting him.

The researchers concluded that while the man’s excessive vaccination history increased his antibody levels and apparently protected him from infection, the hyperactivation of his immune system did not appear to have had a negative effect on his ability to organize an adequate response.

At the same time, his “extreme” vaccinations do not appear to have granted him a level of superimmunity that would strongly distinguish his response from that of others following the recommended vaccination schedule. In short, “his immune system was neither positively nor negatively affected“Schober said.

The case study, the researchers conclude, shows that hypervaccination against Covid did not lead to adverse events and increased the quantity of specific antibodies and T cells, without having a strong positive or negative effect on the quality of immune responses.

While we proceed on the one hand with the study of the possible relationship between Covid vaccines and myocarditis and pericarditis, on the other hand from this research we know that, although to date no signs of SARS-CoV-2 infections have been found in patients undergoing the test, it is not possible to clarify whether this is causally related to the hypervaccination regimen. “It is important – they conclude – to underline that we do not support hypervaccination as a strategy to improve adaptive immunity”.