A German man who claimed to have received more than 200 COVID-19 vaccinations has shown no signs of immunity fatigue.
In research published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, scientists from German and Austrian universities put the man’s immune system under the microscope after discovering the case from a series of newspaper reports.
According to the researchers, the 62-year-old from Magdeburg in Germany claimed to have received 217 vaccinations against SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – within 3 years. They confirmed at least 134 vaccinations took place.
While the reasons for these vaccines were not described in the study, news reports in 2022 allege a then 60-year-old man from the same town received almost 100 shots to sell forged vaccination cards. These included eight different vaccine types, including mRNA-based jabs.
“We [then] contacted him and invited him to undergo various tests in Erlangen. He was very interested in doing so,” says Kilian Schober, a joint-senior author of the study.
This investigation into the effects of ‘hypervaccination’ saw blood and saliva samples from the man (known as ‘HIM’), studied by groups from three universities.
Some scientists believed over-exposure to the same vaccination could fatigue the immune system, as is known to be the case with other infectious diseases like HIV and Hepatitis.
But in HIM’s case, it appears more than 100 COVID jabs have had little negative effect. ‘Memory’ cells present in his samples were as high as in control groups used for the study, and there appeared no evidence of a weakened immune system, according to the researchers.
Though HIM’s samples showed no sign of the man having ever been infected with the virus, it’s unclear whether this is due to his hypervaccination status.
The team says there is no overall positive benefit being identified in his case.
“The observation that no noticeable side effects were triggered despite this extraordinary hypervaccination indicates that the drugs have a good degree of tolerability,” says Schober.
However, the researchers stress that current advice – in many jurisdictions for a two or three-dose vaccination protocol followed by periodic boosters – is appropriate, noting they “do not endorse hypervaccination as a strategy to enhance adaptive immunity”.
