Every year we are told to get our flu shot or flu vaccine to help us not to catch whatever strain may be around. However, there is a two-fold problem with flu shots. First, there are usually up to half a dozen different strains of flu each year, sometimes even more strains, so deciding on which strain or strains to develop a vaccine can be a gamble. Many years those that develop the vaccines win the gamble and some years they don’t.

Secondly, flu strains can mutate from year to year. However, it takes on average about 11 months to develop a vaccine and then mass produce it. In that 11 months, the strain or strains chosen by the developers of the vaccine, can mutate enough to make the vaccine less effective. We saw that in the 2017-18 flu season where it was reported that the vaccine was only about 30% effective at best. The result was many more people came down sick and more than normal died as a result of the flu.

However, 30% is still better than 0%, especially for the very young, older and those with weakened health or immune systems. That’s me. I’m 67 and have a very weak immune system, so, I opted to get the flu shot last flu season and this flu season. So far, I’ve not contracted the flu.

But, what if someone could find a way to protect us from every strain of flu? Imagine the number of doctor and hospital visits would be eliminated along with saving hundreds and thousands of lives.

The problem is, it’s currently impossible to develop a vaccine to protect against all forms of flu, but there may be another way, according to a recent report:

“The dreamlike goal of having universal, one-off flu jabs just got a little bit closer, thanks to the discovery that certain immune cells can fight off all three strains of influenza – perhaps permanently, or at least for several years.”

“At the moment, the various types of influenza – strains A, B, and C – are put into the annual vaccine at different rates every year to stay ahead of the mutated versions of the virus. If our immune system could fight all of them, we wouldn’t need to keep vaccinating so often.”

“The potential for particular immune cells to take care of all three flu strains was spotted in an earlier analysis of people exposed to the H7N9 (bird flu) virus in 2013. Those who had a strong response from CD8+ T cells were much more likely to recover.”

“These CD8+ T cells are often known as ‘killer cells’ because of the way they fight incoming threats – like a security force guarding the gates of our bodies.”

“‘Our team has been fascinated by the killer cells for a long time,’ says lead researcher Katherine Kedzierska, from the University of Melbourne in Australia. ‘So our next step was to discover how their protective mechanism worked, and if it had potential for a flu vaccine’.”

“This is where the new research comes in. Mass spectrometry analysis was used to sift through 67,000 viral sequences, looking for specific peptides or chemical bonds common among all three flu strains in humans.”

“Particular combinations known as epitopes can act as flags to CT8+ T cells, telling them a virus has arrived and initiating the orders to kill it.”

While writing this post, I couldn’t help but think of the news this week of a local fourth grader who was diagnosed with strep throat Tuesday morning but by that night, she went into cardiac arrest and died. She was a young victim of flu. It’s quite possible that if the technology described above existed today, this young girl would still be alive and her family would not be grieving. If only…