A study reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine shows people who pull through swine flu may be left with an unusual natural ability to fight off other flu viruses. While wrestling with the H1N1 virus, the body makes other antibodies that later can fight many other flu strains.
It is hoped that by exploiting these findings, scientist can make a universal flu vaccine that would defend against any type of influenza.
If such a feat is attained, it would solve an age old problem that scientists and researchers face at the moment: year after year, researchers struggle to forecast coming flu strains and how to rapidly produce a new vaccine for the strains each flu season.
Last year H1N1 swine flu virus that reached pandemic levels infecting an estimated 60 million people.
This study provides the possibility of making a single vaccine that could potentially provide immunity to all influenza.
In the nine patients they studied who had caught swine flu during the pandemic, they found the infection had triggered the production of a wide range of antibodies that are only very rarely seen after seasonal flu infections or flu vaccination.
Five antibodies isolated by the team could fight all the seasonal H1N1 flu strains from the last decade, the devastating “Spanish flu” strain from 1918 which killed up to 50m people, plus a potentially deadly bird flu H5N1 strain.
The researchers believe the “extraordinarily” powerful antibodies were created as the body learned how to fight the new infection with swine flu using its old memory of how to fight off other flu viruses.
