No More Flu anyone?

In this article, talks about a break through in the flu vaccine earlier this month. Doctors in Oxford's Jenner Institute have found a way to create a universal flu vaccine. Previously, flu vaccines were made using a proteins on the shell of the flu virus to destroy it. The problem arises because those proteins mutate all the time, thus giving us the swine flu, bird flu and many others. Each flu had to be taken in to guess the strain and taken through a 4 month process to get vaccines off the production lines and into stores.

Now, Dr. Sarah Gilbert and her team have used activated T-cells (part of our immune system, the main component of our body learning to fight new diseases, these are the first soldiers at the battle scene scoping out the weakness of the enemy) to target common proteins inside the flu virus common to almost all strains of flu, called nucleoproteins. How this vaccine differs from normal seasonal flu vaccines are seasonal flu vaccines use weakened or killed flu viruses with the protein still left in them, and are injected into our body for OUR body's T-cells to get the information to defend itself, which takes a bit of time. On the other hand, this new activated T-cell vaccine, injects T-cells that already know how to kill the flu virus into our body, this alerts our body, and cuts the time our body has to learn the virus and preparing for it out. After vaccinating the Dr.'s saw an increase in the bodies immune system, but most importantly, it has the intelligence needed and is ready to fight, before the virus even enters the body.

The reason I chose this article is because I saw the it was cool for researchers to finally find a more efficient way to fight the flu, although it is not a 100% protection it is still a step up from the regular seasonal vaccines that we have to get a shot every year to get protected against, this is you get vaccinated once, and you are set for life.

With the seasonal flu vaccines, adults over 50 have a 30%-40% effectiveness, I wonder (as well as the researchers) if the effectiveness for older adults who have weakened immune systems would increase.