Page 35 - JCTR-10-3

Journal of Clinical and Translational Research 2024; 10(3): 209-211

Journal of Clinical and Translational Research

Journal homepage: http://www.jctres.com/en/home

LETTER

Genetic and environmental influences on vaccine hesitancy

Judy Lynn Silberg *, Andrew Heath , Frederick Gerard Moeller 3
2
1
1 Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and
Translational Research, Richmond, Virginia, United States of America, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Washington University, St.
2
Louis, Missouri, United States of America, Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Commonwealth University, C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center
3
for Clinical and Translational Research, Richmond, Virginia, United States of America
ARTICLE INFO 1. Introduction

Article history: Polarizing attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccine continue to impede public health
Received: January 11, 2024 efforts to control the spread of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Approximately 80% of the US
Accepted: March 27, 2024 population report having been vaccinated at least once, but refusal rates are as high as
Published Online: June 5, 2024 30% in some states. Despite the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), only 22% of adults have received an updated second dose of the
Keywords: vaccine [1].
COVID-19 The present study was conducted to examine the role of genetic and environmental
Vaccine hesitancy factors in vaccine hesitancy. Early twin studies of attitudes suggest that both genetic and
Genetics environmental factors contribute to differences in political and social behavior [2,3]. For
Environment
Twins example, political affiliation and conservatism, attitudes that have been associated with
vaccine resistance, have a significant genetic influence. Social-environmental factors
*Corresponding author: have been strongly implicated in vaccine hesitancy, but the extent to which genetic
Judy Lynn Silberg factors contribute remains uncertain [4]. Given the rising rates of COVID-19 and the
Department of Human and Molecular emergence of new COVID variants, we utilized a twin design to assess the genetic and
Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, environmental influences on vaccine acceptance (and hesitancy).
C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center
for Clinical and Translational Research, 2. Methods
Richmond, Virginia, United States of America
Email: judy.silberg@vcuhealth.org 2.1. Subjects

© 2024 Author(s). This is an Open- Between June 2020 and October 2021, information on acute COVID-19 and
Access article distributed under the terms vaccine acceptance was collected on monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) adult
of the Creative Commons Attribution- twins, recruited from the Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry (MATR). Twins were eligible to
Noncommercial License, permitting all participate if both twins were registered in the MATR and if at least one twin had been
non-commercial use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the seen within the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) health system. Self-report
original work is properly cited. data were collected using an online research platform developed by Vibrent (United
States of America).
2.2. Assessment
Twins were asked: “Since January 2020, have you been sick for more than 1 day with
an illness related to COVID-19 symptoms? Did you receive the COVID-19 vaccine
in the past year? If not, when a COVID-19 vaccine is available, how likely are you to
want to get the vaccine? If not, what factors make you less likely to get the vaccine?”.
A validated series of questions on twin similarity was used to classify the twins as
MZ or DZ [5]. The study was approved by the VCU Institutional Review Board (IRB)
(#HM200021382).

DOI: http://doi.org/10.36922/jctr.24.00002