According to a research paper published in the journal JAMA Network Open, “People who reported experiencing side effects to the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines such as fever, chills or muscle pain tended to have a greater antibody response following vaccination”, CNN reports.

The study further suggested that such symptoms commonly observedbafter vaccination was associated with greater antibody responses compared with having only pain or rash at the injection site or no symptoms at all.

The study authors, which included researchers from the Columbia University in New York, University of Vermont and Boston University, wrote “In conclusion, these findings support reframing postvaccination symptoms as signals of vaccine effectiveness and reinforce guidelines for vaccine boosters in older adults”.

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases told CNN “I don’t want a patient to tell me that, ‘Golly, I didn’t get any reaction, my arm wasn’t sore, I didn’t have fever. The vaccine didn’t work.’ I don’t want that conclusion to be out there. This is more to reassure people who have had a reaction that that’s their immune system responding, actually in a rather good way, to the vaccine, even though it has caused them some discomfort.”

“A lot of people have speculated over the years whether people who had more of a reaction to the vaccine might actually have that represent a more vigorous immune response. And these data would appear to support that,” Dr. Schaffner added to CNN.