An End to Yearly Flu Vaccines?

Not quite, unfortunately. Instead, researchers Maamary, Wang, Tan, Palese, and Ravetch have found a way to use already existing vaccines and make them more effective by increasing the strains the body responds to through the immune response. The difficulty with the common influenza vaccine is that the disease is highly mutatable, so a vaccine that successfully functions one year may not work the next. By “targeting the Fc receptor, CD23, during vaccination with existing influenza vaccines (TIV) to increase the breadth and potency of the antibody response,” existing vaccines wouldn’t become irrelevant, but rather an improved tool (Maamary et al).

I find this development extremely interesting! At least to me, it sometimes seems like we treat medicine as a magic external fix, rather than a tool that works in tandem with our bodies to protect us. This study, however, emphasizes using our natural bodily defenses to fight off disease. It also points out how little we still know about our body and the way it functions. Perhaps other diseases could be targeted using the body’s defense mechanisms, stimulated by vaccines or medicine. Overall, this is the most interesting vaccine study I’ve come across so far.

Works Cited

Maamary, J., Wang, T. T., Tan, G. S., Palese, P., & Ravetch, J. V. (2017). Increasing the breadth and potency of response to the seasonal influenza virus vaccine by immune complex immunization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(38), 10172-10177. doi:10.1073/pnas.1707950114

Possible Vaccine Combinations for Malaria Identified

In 2017, researchers Bustamante et al. made new progress towards the development of a malaria vaccine by screening a variety of antigens. Still killing thousands each year, primarily in countries with less medical care, malaria is difficult to prevent with a vaccine, due to “high levels of parasite genetic diversity, which makes single target vaccines vulnerable to the development of variant-specific immunity” (Bustamante et. al). Essentially, malaria is so diversified that it would be difficult to create one vaccine that is equally efficient at combatting all the different strains, plus it creates a higher chance of one of the strains finding a way to survive despite the vaccine due to mutation. Naturally, they found that a vaccine that combines multiple points of attack towards the virus during different stages of its infectious process has a much better chance of actually preventing the disease.

This article also definitely passes the CRAAP test. It was published only last year, and no new malaria vaccine has been developed since to make it irrelevant. Also, it does deal with vaccines, making it relevant to the assignment. The authority of the article is also respectable, as it was published by seventeen researchers in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, which is a respected journal. Because it was peer-reviewed and isn’t just an article published on a blog or something without qualifications, it is much less likely to be biased or even manipulated by the author(s). This also speaks to the accuracy of the piece. Finally, the point-of-view is again only slightly biased if anything, as they simply reported the facts of their experiments, not their opinions on how it could be the greatest scientific breakthrough known to man or something of that nature.

Works Cited

Bustamante, L, et. al. (2017). A systematic and prospectively validated approach for identifying synergistic drug combinations against malaria. Malaria Journal, 17(1). doi:10.1186/s12936-018-2294-5

Children Vaccinated Early Not Unhealthier than Children With Spaced Vaccines

Many parents these days are worried about the effects of vaccines on their children, so another strategy to mitigate these effects as much as possible has arisen. Instead of potentially overwhelming the immune system of the child, parents have chosen to spread out the normal vaccines to give the children’s immune system more time to adjust. However, a recent study by Glanz, Newcomer, and Daley et al. has found that children who receive their vaccines according to the schedule professed by doctors, where the child gets a number of vaccines as soon as it is safe are just as healthy as the children who haven’t received the same vaccines. The researchers found that “the estimated mean cumulative antigen exposure from birth through age 23 months was 240.6 for cases and 242.9 for controls, a difference that was not statistically significant” (Glanz et al.).

I believe this study should be even more reassuring to parents that are worried about the health of their children. Even when children aren’t given vaccines, it’s usually due to the parents’ fear of their children becoming unhealthy.  After last week’s post, we know that there is no relation between vaccines and developing autism, and this week would suggest that there is in fact no scientifically-based concern that should deter parents from promptly vaccinating their children, preventing them and those they interact with from developing terrible diseases that have become much less common due to vaccines, at least in the first twenty-three months of life.

 

Works Cited

Glanz, J. M., Newcomer, S. R., Daley, et al. (2018). Association Between Estimated Cumulative Vaccine Antigen Exposure Through the First 23 Months of Life and Non–Vaccine-Targeted Infections From 24 Through 47 Months of Age. Jama, 319(9), 906. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.0708