There's a really interesting new paper out in Science for people who care about immunity to flu (which should be everyone because flu is a VERY big problem): www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Here's my thread explaining this work🧵 - ThreadSky

enirenberg.bsky.social • 188 days ago

There's a really interesting new paper out in Science for people who care about immunity to flu (which should be everyone because flu is a VERY big problem):
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi2396

Here's my thread explaining this work🧵

Comments

luismrc.bsky.social•188 days ago

There is also an underlying problem. People only think for themselves. I saw a guy at a restaurant who was either with bad allergies or sick and was coughing, sneezing next to other people without trying to cover his mouth properly.

dvdvmoe.bsky.social•188 days ago

Thank you very much for this most intriguing thread!

i270exit1.bsky.social•188 days ago

Cool. Now I think I understand why my birth year excluded me from some flu vaccine trials.

woslet.bsky.social•188 days ago

Thanks for sharing! I can’t access the article - what age were the newborns? We’ve just done a study looking at maternal immunisation so I’m interested in hearing about the sample selection!

enirenberg.bsky.social•188 days ago

The infants ranged from 0.5 to 1 with an average age of 0.6

woslet.bsky.social•188 days ago

Thanks; yes that’s out of the age range as we looked at protection of neonates under 1 month. Looks like a sophisticated study and very timely

roarkfineart.bsky.social•177 days ago

@raider-nation.bsky.social

johnkubale.bsky.social•188 days ago

Oo this sounds super interesting. Adding to my reading list.

enirenberg.bsky.social•188 days ago

A bit of background: As far as immunity goes, flu is a very tough chestnut to crack. There are a crazy number of strains, and the virus replicates very quickly- factors that make it very hard to durably suppress transmission (though vaccines do help). One of the challenges with flu is that people...

enirenberg.bsky.social•188 days ago

vary in how well they respond to specific strains. Each season, we have H1N1, H3N2, and B/Victoria strains circulating. Some people are very good at responding to H1 viruses, some are very good at responding to H3, and some are very good at responding to influenza B- but they may have...

enirenberg.bsky.social•188 days ago

a harder time responding to the other strains. Related to this, one of the historical challenges of H5 influenza vaccines (avian flu) has been that people often need multiple vaccinations with high doses of the antigen and usually an adjuvant to make appreciable protective antibody responses.

enirenberg.bsky.social•188 days ago

Generally, one of the biggest factors in determining which strains you respond effectively against and which you don't has been the year in which you were born:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aag1322
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1008109

The thinking here is "first flu is forever."

enirenberg.bsky.social•188 days ago

Basically, once you encounter your first strain of flu, you make memory cells against it, and this biases your response against all future strains to concentrate on the features shared by the new virus and the first one you were exposed to, meaning you make responses against some strains much...

enirenberg.bsky.social•188 days ago

better than others. This led to a hypothesis of "antigenic blessings," wherein before people are infected with their first strain of flu, you vaccinate them with the antigens of many different flu strains at the same time, with the thinking that this could reduce subtype bias.

looftsabine.bsky.social•188 days ago

@skyview.social unroll

scicom.bsky.social•188 days ago

Excellent thread, and indeed a very interesting paper!

kstephensonmd.bsky.social•188 days ago

📌

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