Author Interviews, Flu - Influenza, Pediatrics, Science, UCLA / 28.11.2016
First Childhood Exposure Determines How Sick You Get From Flu As Adult
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Katelyn M. Gostic and
Monique Ambrose
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of California
Los Angeles
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Monique Ambrose: Influenza pandemics pose a serious, recurrent threat to human public health. One of the most probable sources of future pandemic influenza viruses is the pool of influenza A virus (IAV) subtypes that currently circulate in non-human animals. It has traditionally been thought that the human population is immunologically naïve and unprotected against these unfamiliar subtypes. However, our work suggests that an individual ‘imprints’ to the influenza A virus (IAV) encountered in early childhood in such a way that they retain protection against severe disease if they later encounter a novel IAV subtype that belongs to the same genetic group as their first exposure.
Our research looked at human cases of H5N1 and H7N9, two avian IAV subtypes of global concern, to investigate what factors most strongly predicted risk of severe disease. The most striking explanatory factor was childhood IAV imprinting: our results suggest that individuals who had childhood imprinting on an IAV in the same genetic group as the avian IAV they encountered later in life experienced 75% protection against severe disease and 80% protection against death.
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