Scientists Discover Why 2014 Flu Vaccine Didn’t Work So Well
After the fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained
that the 2014-2015 flu season has hit a snag in treatment options with
“effectiveness of the vaccine only 25%, while it was 50-60% during other
years”.
Now scientists at the Wistar Institute (WI) are saying that it was “a single mutation in that strain” which caused the vaccine to become ineffectual.
Researchers tested live H3N2 viruses in ferrets and sheep to monitor
natural antibodies the animals produced to combat different mutations of
the virus.
One mutation caused the animals to respond “more weakly” than others
which caused a “fourfold decrease in how effective the antibodies were
in fighting the virus that had this mutation.”
Scott Hensley, assistant professor for the WI, commented that his
team “would like to be able to look ahead and try to predict how the
virus might mutate in the future, and be able to make predictions if
next year’s flu vaccine will be effective.”
The CDC concluded that current strain of flu “attacking” people was H3N2 which was believed to have “mutated from the earlier strain”.
