BARCELONA -- The first study to evaluate the response to pneumococcal vaccination in patients with rheumatoid arthritis receiving abatacept found that modulation of T-cell costimulation by this agent did not completely inhibit the humoral response to the vaccine, Dr. Michael Schiff reported at the annual European Congress of Rheumatology.
Any agent that affects immune function can alter the response to vaccination, and in a recent study of healthy volunteers, abatacept reduced the response to 23-valent pneumococcal vaccine.
However, it did not significantly inhibit the subjects' ability to develop a clinically significant twofold or greater response to the vaccine ...