Dagne
Elite member
I was wondering why North Italian fatality rates are so high. Apart from typical risk factors, air pollution, there could be an issue of annual flu vaccination. There are very strong programmes for free flu vaccination for people >65 in Lombardy. Annual flu vaccination helps to reduce flu risks, but can reduce immune's system response to different viruses. This is how it works:
"After being vaccinated with a new strain of flu, our immune systems appear to be expanding and boosting antibodies generated by previous exposures to earlier flu viruses, whether by infection or vaccination," said George Georgiou, a professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and molecular biosciences, a leader in the field of therapeutics and immune responses and co-author of the study.
The researchers examined the composition and dynamics of an individual donor's antibody repertoire over a five-year period during which the donor had been infected or vaccinated with influenza multiple times. The study suggests our immune systems are "imprinted" by antibodies that had been elicited in response to influenza strains encountered previously in life.
"Each vaccination still elicits new antibodies that are highly specific to the new strains, but these new antibodies decay over time, returning to the antibody repertoire that already existed before the vaccination," said Jiwon Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in Georgiou's Laboratory of Protein Therapeutics and Applied Immunology who led the study.
The researchers found that the antibody repertoires remained highly static throughout. More than 70 percent of the antibody molecules found in the donor's bloodstream remained the same over five years. More than two-thirds of these persistent antibodies targeted invariant parts of the virus -- the elements that do not change from one year to the next.
These persistent antibodies continue to be produced by the immune system for years and can affect our ability to generate novel antibodies that recognize unique molecular features of a new seasonal strain."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320110619.
The key finding is that annual flu vaccination can affect immune systems ability to recognise unique molecular features of a new virus. In this case - novel coronavirus. It is not clear if this is really the case, but if so, people who get their flu shot annually could be also in a risk zone, if their immune system's response is impaired by annual flu vaccination.
"After being vaccinated with a new strain of flu, our immune systems appear to be expanding and boosting antibodies generated by previous exposures to earlier flu viruses, whether by infection or vaccination," said George Georgiou, a professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and molecular biosciences, a leader in the field of therapeutics and immune responses and co-author of the study.
The researchers examined the composition and dynamics of an individual donor's antibody repertoire over a five-year period during which the donor had been infected or vaccinated with influenza multiple times. The study suggests our immune systems are "imprinted" by antibodies that had been elicited in response to influenza strains encountered previously in life.
"Each vaccination still elicits new antibodies that are highly specific to the new strains, but these new antibodies decay over time, returning to the antibody repertoire that already existed before the vaccination," said Jiwon Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in Georgiou's Laboratory of Protein Therapeutics and Applied Immunology who led the study.
The researchers found that the antibody repertoires remained highly static throughout. More than 70 percent of the antibody molecules found in the donor's bloodstream remained the same over five years. More than two-thirds of these persistent antibodies targeted invariant parts of the virus -- the elements that do not change from one year to the next.
These persistent antibodies continue to be produced by the immune system for years and can affect our ability to generate novel antibodies that recognize unique molecular features of a new seasonal strain."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320110619.
The key finding is that annual flu vaccination can affect immune systems ability to recognise unique molecular features of a new virus. In this case - novel coronavirus. It is not clear if this is really the case, but if so, people who get their flu shot annually could be also in a risk zone, if their immune system's response is impaired by annual flu vaccination.
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