Does anyone here have thoughts about the likelihood of an effective "universal" flu shot becoming available in the near future? We discussed this a bit in my pharmacology class last year:
Researchers take step toward developing 'universal' flu vaccine | News Center | Stanford Medicine
I know Francis Collins had been "guardedly optimistic" back in 2011 about development of a long-term shot to replace the one you'd have to renew every year by 2018. I haven't followed up on any news regarding it since that class ended.
Medically speaking I'm also guardedly optimistic.
Socially speaking I have some major concerns and am overall pessimistic.
The link provided a clear explanation of the biology. On the surface of the virus are protrusions shaped somewhat like mushrooms. Previous vaccines attack the caps, which differ from strain to strain. The stems however are fairly constant and the idea is to attack them. If it works it would be effective across strains.
Good idea. But one wonders why it was not thought of before and why the body has not stumbled on to it. They may be related. Researchers generally have used how the body attacked diseases as a blueprint. Might it be that in someone the body did stumble onto attacking the stem and it turned out to be not as effective and thus was not an evolutionary advantage, that strain specific attacks were more effective? Looking at it from a purely geometric perspective the cap is far more exposed to attack.
Based on these 2 lines of reasoning I strongly suspect that for a specific variation the variation specific vaccines will continue to be more effective, likely much more effective. I think there is an excellent chance that instead of providing the kind of protection we have come to expect it might well 'prevent infection' less than half the time, but give the body a better chance to react and might well reduce severity and length of the time someone is infectious in 90% plus of cases. So it might NOT provide significant protection to those in the traditional at risk groups. It would provide significant benefits for those with good immune systems and more important hugely improve herd immunity.
Now in a society composed of smart and responsible people such would still be a major advance. Using it WITH a variety specific vaccine would give 2 levels of protection. If some unanticipated strain starts to spread what would have been a massive epidemic may fizzle out.
IF this will work as one element of multistrain injection the social problem is very solvable. However the worst case for medical success and social failure is that becasue this is different from what the body already does if administered at the same time the strain specific vaccine it might never get 'tooled up'. If it required administration at a separate time I see social problems.
I don't see an additional shot going over well, it will end up an either or for far to many people and the choices made may prove worse than no choice save the strain specific vaccine overall.
Finally I do not see this happening quickly. From what little bio-chemistry I know I strongly suspect the ends of the stem will be both the most likely to be detected as an invader and vulnerable to attack. The problem is that these will not be exposed when the virus is intact. That means the researchers may well have the significant problem of figuring out how to cap both ends of the stem before they even get to the point of having a stem they can work with.
If I prove a prophet I might as well start being a voice crying out in the wilderness right now.
If it goes this way get both, especially if you have relatives who are in at risk groups. A huge part of the advantage of herd immunity is resistance in the parts of the herd closest to you. For those in at risk groups it is their family and friends. Heck a second shot (and second visit) is worth it even if all it does is cut yuor time when you have symptoms by a couple of days.
EDIT: On the wildly optimistic side I'll mention that in addition to probably being harder to attack the stem is likely harder to detect, that the parts of the immune system going out looking have to get past the cap to get to the stem. It is possible that the body has not used this because by the time the stem gets detected the battle is already decided. There is a chance that we could get lucky and the late detection was the more significant part of the body not already doing this.
