If you got your flu shot this year, remember that you need to get another one
next year, and every year after that. As this ScienCentral News video reports,
one scientist found out that skipping a flu shot can increase your flu risk
that year.
New Flu, New Flu Shot
This year, an unprecedented number of Americans have gotten a flu
shot, because of concern about both SARS
and the influenza virus' virulent new mutation, known as the Fujian
strain. Although this year’s flu vaccine does not include the Fujian
strain, it does include a close relation. According to Julie
Gerberding, M.D. , director of the federal Centers
for Disease Control, that means “our population at large is probably
the best protected [from influenza] that we have ever seen."
The CDC targets flu
shots to those at greater risk because of age or health, including children
under two years, adults over 50, and anyone with a chronic illness. But one
bioengineer says that if you got a flu shot last year, and skipped it this year,
you’re at greater risk, too. In fact, you may be worse off than if you'd
never gotten a flu shot at all.
Michael W. Deem,
professor of bioengineering, physics, and astronomy at Rice
University in Houston, Texas, has researched a biological phenomenon known
as "original
antigenic sin," first discovered in people and farm animals in 1953.
Original
sin is a theological concept that accounts for human flaws, and an antigen
is biologists' term for an invading organism, such as the influenza virus. So
original antigenic sin describes an apparent failing in the human immune system—it
may recognize a certain strain of a disease, such as the current flu virus strain,
but then tries to fight an entirely different strain by "remembering"
how it fought the first strain it encountered.
image: American Lung Association
A flu shot gives the immune system something to "remember" to fight
off. But the flu virus mutates very rapidly, and the vaccine is changed every
year, so skipping that shot one year can mislead the immune system into thinking
it knows how to combat the latest strain. "The immune system may use its
memory from last year and try to combat this year's flu with last year's antibodies,"
says Deem. "The memory in the immune system is actually leading the immune
system astray." As a result, Deem says, you may be more likely to get the
flu during that year, compared to your chances of illness if you had never gotten
a flu shot in previous years.
Deem says an annual flu shot keeps the immune system up to speed. "This
allows the immune system to build up its repertoire of antibodies that can control
the flu for that particular individual," he says. "For rapidly mutating
strains such as the flu, the vaccine needs to contain the most likely strains.
And it's not simply that all the strains can be included in the vaccine, because
the strains interfere with each other to some extent, so there is a limit to
how many strains can be put into the vaccine every year."
If you or your kids didn't get a flu shot this year and you have flu symptoms,
the CDC says anti-viral drugs can help if you take them early. See your doctor
as soon as you can. And if you did get a shot this year, stay protected by getting
one next year, and every year from now on.
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