Immune Response Analysis in Lymph Node Tissue

Planning to update your COVID vaccine?

Yale researchers are studying the immune response to COVID vaccinations among healthy and immune suppressed individuals. If you are planning to update your vaccine, you may qualify for a research study.

Qualifying participants should be:

• Age 18 or older
• Planning to update their COVID19 vaccination within the next 90 days
• EITHER:
  • Healthy (no history of immune problems and not taking any immune suppressing medicine)
  • Taking a B-cell depleting medicine (e.g. rituximab, ocrelizumab, ofatumumab) to treat an autoimmune disease
  • Taking glatiramer or interferon-type medication to treat an autoimmune disease

Participants in this research project will have a fine needle aspiration and/or biopsy of lymph nodes in their armpit before and at several timepoints after vaccination. Ultrasounds will be performed before these procedures to visualize the lymph nodes. Blood will also be collected. There would be 4-6 study visits over about 10 weeks. Compensation of up to $1000 is available.

If you are interested, please complete the pre-screening survey at https://redcap.link/9md3047j or email MSResearch@yale.edu.