As we hear promising efforts to create a vaccination for Covid-19 being available in 2021, the question comes up -- should we take a vaccination while on immune suppression. I am not getting into the discussion of vaccinations in general, as I am completely supportive of them in the prevention of disease and I take all of the recommended ones for a man of 73.  

My MG neurologist said -- no live virus versions, but yes for the rest including a yearly flu shot, shingles etc.  She also said "you are on immune suppression, so your immune system does not react as aggressively as a normal person.  That means the vaccination may not be as effective as it would in a normal person as your body may not create the antibodies that it would were you not immune suppressed."

So to the question of taking a Covid-19 vaccination:   

   -- no live virus version

   -- the vaccination should have passed all three phases of testing:  Phase 1--Safety  2--Will it work-small number of people tested Phase 3--studies in large groups comparing it to placebo in double blind studies (patient nor researcher knows who gets drug vs placebo).  After phase 3 then it goes through government review and approval or rejection.  Typically this takes a few years from concept to approval.  

   -- Your doctor says it is OK.  Mine has always said yes.  

And then, of course, it may not work if we are too heavily immune suppressed to create antibodies that protect us. So we continue to take the Covid-19 precautions.  If you have MG and are on immune suppression, you should already be taking those precautions that now society as a whole is being told to practice, just no longer feel like you are someone to be gawked at for wearing a mask or for carrying hand sanitizer.  Gives everyone some of the germ paranoia we experience all the time.  

I also am a little reluctant to be the first to take a vaccination for Covid-19 as they are rushing this and possibly the phased testing may be abbreviated.  But, like taking the flu shot, the downside to the flu vaccination is that the antibodies created are not always the ones that appear when the flu finally comes to us, the virus having changed along the way. So taking an early Covid-19 vaccination may not be quite the right one to protect us. 

The controversy over vaccinations is strange.  I am old enough to have seen my friends die from polio, to see my grandparent's era of people whose faces were covered with smallpox reminders, and to have suffered through the half dozen childhood diseases that now are prevented.  I am sexton of the local cemetery dating from 1857 and see all of the children there including my 10-year-old friend Alice in the 1955, there from diseases that are all now preventable with a vaccination.  The science on vaccinations is very clear -- they work.  

Good Luck

Russ