Achilles Heel Of Dengue Virus Identified, Offering Target For Future Vaccines
A team of scientists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University have pinpointed the region on dengue virus that is neutralized in people who overcome infection with the deadly pathogen. The results challenge the current state of dengue vaccine research, which is based on studies in mice and targets a different region of the virus. "In the past researchers have relied on mouse studies to understand how the immune system kills dengue virus and assumed that the mouse studies would apply to people as well, " said senior study author Aravinda M.
Age, Flu And Resistance
There is a connection between age and susceptibility to the influenza virus. It can't be explained by frailty in general, because it is not obvious that very small children and the very old are the biggest risk groups. In a study of the connection between age and the risk of suffering from the flu, Timpka and his colleagues show that the 2009 swine flu affected age groups 10-19 and 20-29 the worst. They studied how five different influenza epidemics struck in OstergГ tland County of East Sweden between 2005 and 2010.
Next Generation Vaccines May Trick Immune Cells
By discovering how vital immune cells known as dendritic cells recognize dead and damaged cells, researchers think they may have found a new approach for next generation vaccines that "trick" cells into launching an immune response. Such vaccines would be more effective and result in fewer side-effects, they suggest. Dendritic cells are unique immune cells that detect dead and damaged cells, digest them, and present them to other immune cells capable of recognizing foreign agents such as bacteria, viruses and parasites.