Study raises concerns about the effectiveness of the monkeypox vaccine

An new study is raising concerns about the effectiveness of the monkeypox vaccine being used in the United States and other parts of the world. The work, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that two doses of the vaccine induced relatively low levels of neutralizing antibodies against the monkeypox virus, and those antibodies had poor neutralizing capacity. The researchers noted the so-called correlates of protection — what is needed, in terms of immune system weaponry, to be protected against monkeypox — are not known. Still, the evidence of low levels of neutralizing antibodies raises questions about how much protection is generated by two doses of the vaccine, marketed as Jynneos in the U.S. and made by the Danish manufacturer Bavarian Nordic. “At this moment it is unclear what the relatively low [monkeypox virus] neutralizing titers mean for protection against disease and transmissibility,” the researchers, from Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands,...