Some Flu Deaths Caused By Immune Response Not The Virus

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This, after a team led by researchers from Yale University suggests that deaths in older people initially thought to be caused the influenza virus is actually caused by the body’s response to an invading flu virus, by secreting an antiviral protein called interferons that attack the effects of the flu virus.

The production of these vital antiviral proteins decline as people age and by the time a person reaches the age of 65, the amount of interferons in the body are not enough to ward off the damaging effects of the flu virus.

This was published very recently in the Science journal where the study demonstrated that the replication process of the flu virus is not powerful enough to drive death due to the seasonal flu.

The study’s senior author Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology and medical investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, pointed out that their study shows that older people are more susceptible to influenza due to the lack of ability to mount an attack through an antiviral response.

No less than 90 percent of deaths linked to flu each year in elderly people aged 65 and above all over the world.

The researchers conducted the study by creating mice models that imitated reduced immune response among the elderly and blocked the genes that enabled the immune system to detect flu and letting the virus replicate where it was responsible for causing an inflammation that led to the flu deaths.

Dr. Iwasaki said that it needed the host response that included neutrophils or white blood cells that are responsible for inflammation to fend of infection.

These neutrophils are triggered by inflammasomes which are heavy duty inflammatory response usually topped by the body for virulent infections. These are so powerful that these cells also damage lung tissues as a side effect.

Dr. Iwasaki, however, said that their findings would highlight the quest for new strategies to combat flu and may even be able to address the incidence of deaths among the elderly.

The World Health Organization defines influenza as a viral infection that affects the nose, throat and occasionally the lungs. It is usually indicative of a fever about to set in and lasts for about three days to 1 week with symptoms ranging from body pains, fever, muscle aches and severe headache, among others.

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