The Surprising Supplement (Not A Vitamin/Mineral!) That Makes The COVID Vaccine Work Better

Vaccines are great! They’re not a panacea and they absolutely have their limitations, but they also save many millions of lives per year, so that’s a big win.

However, those limitations do mean that whenever we can find a way to make them work better, it’s very positive news.

And that’s what we have for you today:

Spermidine to the rescue!

We’ve written about polyamines before, and their role in healthy longevity, for example: Spermidine For Longevity

And, for that matter: Spermine vs Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s! ← note that spermine is not the same thing as spermidine, but they are related, being both polyamines with overlapping roles

Firstly, we need to understand what polyamines do in healthy cells: polyamines act as “geroprotectors” by stimulating autophagy*, the cellular recycling process, primarily through activation of a specific protein (known to its friends by the snappy name of “eIF5A1”), which supports mitochondrial function and healthy aging.

^{*We wrote about this here: Fisetin: The Anti-Aging Assassin ← so-called because it works by killing the aging cells that need to die sooner rather than later if aging is not to be exacerbated by copying their mistakes forwards (fisetin is not a polyamine, but the principle is the same, making the afore-linked article a good explainer).}

More recently, researchers (Dr. Ghada Alsaleh et al., whence our featured image for this article today) conducted a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled pilot trial involving 40 healthy adults aged 65 or older to test whether 6mg of daily spermidine for 13 weeks after their latest vaccine dose could improve immune responses.

The results, in few words: spermidine supplementation significantly improved several measures of vaccine-induced immunity, including:

• Greater neutralizing antibody activity against multiple viral variants
• Higher levels of SARS-CoV-2 spike-specific IgG antibodies
• Stronger memory B-cell recall responses

As for how it achieved this, lab analyses showed that spermidine:

• Increased autophagic activity in B-cells, helping remove damaged cellular components
• Reduced markers of immune cell senescence, including elevated p16, mTOR signaling, and DNA damage (γ-H2AX)
• Increased expression of genes involved in autophagy and the transcription factor TFEB

In other words: aging of the immune system (immunosenescence) reduces the effectiveness of vaccines in some older adults by impairing B-cell and T-cell function, increasing DNA damage, reducing autophagy (the cell’s recycling system), and promoting cellular senescence—and spermidine does the opposites of most of these things!

That said, it’s worth noting that it’s early days, research-wise;

❝This study was designed as a pilot trial and involved a relatively small number of participants. Larger studies will be needed to determine whether spermidine can consistently improve vaccine responses and whether similar effects are seen with other vaccines, such as those used against seasonal influenza.❞

~ Dr. Katja Simon, co-author

You can read the paper itself, here: Spermidine Mitigates Immune Cell Senescence and Boosts Vaccine Responses in Healthy Older Adults—A Pilot Study

Want to try some?

We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎

Want to learn more?

Check out:

How To Triple Your Chances Of Getting The “Razorblade Throat” COVID Variant Or Long COVID

And if for any reason the above is not actually a goal you have, then you might also consider:

Why Some People Get Sick More (And How To Not Be One Of Them)

Take care!