tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from influenza or a related condition. Unlike chicken pox and many other viruses in which the initial infection often provides lifelong immunity, the flu virus is constantly evolving. As a result, although most children will have been infected by the time they are around 3 years old, they will encounter new bouts of flu every 5?10 years.
As we highlight in a News Feature this week, there is increasing scientific interest in how the human immune system is primed by its first exposure to flu in childhood. This immunologic ?imprinting? in part explains the vastly divergent susceptibilities of people born in different years to seasonal outbreaks of flu. The closer the characteristics of the circulating virus to the strain a person first experienced, the stronger their natural defences against it.
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full article
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05885-5
As we highlight in a News Feature this week, there is increasing scientific interest in how the human immune system is primed by its first exposure to flu in childhood. This immunologic ?imprinting? in part explains the vastly divergent susceptibilities of people born in different years to seasonal outbreaks of flu. The closer the characteristics of the circulating virus to the strain a person first experienced, the stronger their natural defences against it.
...
full article
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05885-5