Forever Flu Shot

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/01/12/in-search-of-a-universal-flu-vaccine/#.WIS6LMvEihA

Summary:

The flu is one virus that no one wants to catch. To prevent yourself from getting the flu your best bet is to get the seasonal flu shot. However making this yearly influenza vaccine relies on the best estimation that a team of scientists across the world come up with. They must predict what will be in the coming year's flu strand in order to create an effective vaccine. Once the prediction is made production of the vaccine is ramped up in hope to get as many people vaccinated before flu season. But what if there was a way to make a flu shot that would work for all influenza strands? This would save many people time, money and stress as well as solving the world's biggest epidemic threat. Some research has revealed that the HA stem of the influenza cell is more constant than the HA spike (cell parts) across the many different influenza strands. So if we could target these stems instead of tips there might be an easier way to make one vaccine for all strands of influenza.



Discussion:

This research is very useful for our world. The flu has actually been one of our biggest epidemics ever and in 1918 killed as many as 50 million people. That is equivalent to 200 million people today. We have developed a vaccine for this epidemic but it must be remade every year. If we could create a vaccine that would need to be remade more infrequently or not at all it would save millions if not billions of dollars and labour hours. This would also allow research into other viruses that we need to treat and therefore would save more people from becoming infected with a virus. Currently there is not much we can do to help except for getting the "flu shot" or influenza vaccine. This will help prevent the spread of influenza as well as preventing it from adapting new ways to fight off our immune system. It would be amazing if we could find a forever flu shot.