The current flu vaccine is only estimated to be 40% effective. That doesn\u2019t mean that only 40% of people who get it will avoid the getting it; it means that the vaccine cuts the risk of someone who gets it from needing to pursue medical help when they do get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Good news for the\nfuture<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Because not all flu vaccines protect against the same\nstrain, a new vaccine is required each year. But a new study has found that one\nparticular type of immune cell may help protect us from every strain of\ninfluenza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A team of researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for\nInfection and Immunity in Australia found that killer T cells in our body\nprotect against influenza A, B and C. These immune cells are so effective that\nthey may eventually help us develop a universal flu vaccine that would work\nyear after year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur immunization studies with the peptide responsible for\nactivating the killer T cells revealed remarkably reduced levels of flu virus\nand inflammation in the airways,\u201d says the lead author of the paper, Marios\nKoutsakos. \u201cWe have identified the parts of the virus that are shared across\nall flu strains and sub-strains capable of infecting humans, and then\ninvestigated if we could find robust responses to those viral parts in healthy\nhumans and influenza-infected adults and children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The results of the paper were published in the journal Nature Immunology.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Influenza in the\nUnited States<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,\nthe 2017-18 flu season saw more than 30,000 cases of hospitalization. Of those\n185 children died from influenza. About 80% of them had not gotten a flu shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the three strains of influenza, type B seems to be the\nleast researched. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cInfluenza B immunology particularly has remained largely\nunderstudied because it doesn\u2019t have pandemic potential,\u201d explains Katherine\nKedzierska, the laboratory head at the Doherty Institute and a professor at the\nUniversity of Melbourne. \u201cHowever, it is a serious virus that can lead to death\nand severe illness, mostly in children, and was one of the missing pieces of\nthe universal flu protection puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The current flu vaccine is only estimated to be 40% effective. That doesn\u2019t mean that only 40% of people who get it will avoid the getting it; it means that the vaccine cuts the risk of someone who gets it from needing to pursue medical help when they do get it. Good news for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[690],"tags":[756,846,982],"class_list":["post-13391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellness","tag-flu","tag-influenza","tag-vaccine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}