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Most surprisingly, the vaccine also cut the risk of asthma. When vaccinated mice were exposed to dust mites, their asthmatic responses, such as increased immune cell production and excess lung mucus, were reduced for three months as well.
Most vaccines work by presenting the immune system with a harmless fragment of a pathogen, allowing the body to prepare an arsenal of targetedIt's been a lifesaving strategy for centuries, but vaccines are frustratingly specific. Those fragments not only differ between pathogens, but often even between strains. That's whyThis new vaccine works on a different mechanism. Rather than target the pathogen itself, it focuses on the body's response. Essentially, it's designed to link the two main arms of the immune system: The long-lasting but specific adaptive immunity that most vaccines work on, and the short-lived but diverse innate immunity. The latter is our first line of defense against unfamiliar threats, but it generally wanes after a few days as the adaptive immune system learns to fight off the pathogen., researchers learned why a common tuberculosis vaccine induced a surprisingly long-lasting innate response. It turns out that T cells – part of the adaptive response – were rallying innate immune cells and keeping them active for several months. After isolating the T cells' critical signals, the team has now found that they can mimic their call-to-arms synthetically to keep the innate immunity going long after it normally would and help bestow a kind of universal immunity. The next steps are human trials, and the team hopes that if research continues, this kind of universal vaccine could be available within five to seven years."The key questions are: will it work as effectively in humans, and is it safe? We already see 'off-target' protection in people who receive certain vaccines, suggesting the potential is real. However, we have to ensure that keeping the body on 'high alert' doesn't lead to friendly fire, where a hyper-ready immune system accidentally triggers unwelcomed side-effects."
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