Influenza, or flu, is a very common annoyance – and, to half a million people or more each year, it’s fatal. To help protect us, governments with guidance from the World Health Organization create new vaccines each year. Each year, really, every several months, the flu strains change in abundance, and some mutate to strains that are more dangerous. The vaccine companies get data from around the world on the most prevalent strains. They use the markers, called antigens, from four strains to create the new vaccine. Its level of prevention of flu starts out near, say, 15% and declines. Still, it helps lower the severity of cases.
One reason for low effectiveness is that individuals vary in our immune response. You may make most of your antibodies against strain 3, I do against strain 1, and so on. Most of as remain susceptible to the strains against which our immune systems did NOT make most antibodies. A helpful idea was recently tested in human volunteers exposed to antigens (not the active virus) by Vamsee Mallajoysula and 15 colleagues at Stanford University. They took antigens from several strains and joined them biochemically. That forced response to all the strains; it showed when blood samples were analyzed for the potency of the antibodies. Good on ya, researchers, as they’d say in Australia.
This has been an outreach activity of the Las Cruces Academy, viewable at GreatSchools.org.
Source: Science 20 Dec., pp. 1389 ff.
