medicalcondition:flu virus

A Federal Ban on Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/20/science/20VIRUS/20VIRUS-facebookJumbo.jpg

In October 2014, all federal funding was halted on efforts to make three viruses more dangerous: the flu virus, and those causing Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

But the new regulations apply to any pathogen that could potentially cause a pandemic. For example, they would apply to a request to create an Ebola virus transmissible through the air, said Dr. Collins.

#ogm

Surprising Human Immune Responses Could Lead to Better Flu Vaccines
▻http://www.wired.com/2014/11/antibody-landscape-flu-vaccine

... when influenza infects someone, it not only triggers an immune response for that particular strain, but for all the strains of that type of flu that have ever infected the person. This phenomenon, named ‘back-boosting,’ means that our old immunity gets boosted every time we’re faced with a new flu virus. Typically, the back boost response was stronger for past strains that were closely related to the infecting strain.

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This means scientists can try to predict how the virus might mutate (an active area of research) and base a vaccine on that, without worrying about diminishing protection against current circulating strains