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Swine flu, better natural immunity than artificial one
- Juan Gérvas, Jim Wright (22 October 2009)
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A/H1N1 vaccine in Germany: Analyzing the reasons for a low acceptability
- David A. Groneberg, David Quarcoo, Cristian Scutaru, Albert Nienhaus, and Andrés de Roux (24 November 2009)
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Cell-mediated immunity neglected in influenza vaccination strategies
- Bo A Engwall (1 December 2009)
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Juan Gérvas, Rural General Practitioner 28730 Buitrago de Lozoya (Madrid) Spain, Jim Wright
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SWINE FLU VACCINE (IF IT WORKS) MAY AVOID NATURAL IMMUNITY THAT LASTS FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS FDA approved vaccines against influenza A (H1N1) (1) which gives support for government plans to provide mass vaccination programs for H1N1 later this year. Such plans are irrational and based on fear mongering and not on a “common sense and self control” policy (as proposed by Spanish physicians and other health professionals) (2). We strongly disagree with mass vaccination, which is based on several false assumptions. The first assumption is that the H1N1 pandemic will mimic the Spanish flu of 1919. This is highly unlikely as the Spanish flu was a pandemic flu in a very poor world, with no public health systems, no tap-water and no antibiotics for complications. In support of this the Spanish flu killed mainly poor people; for example, in India it killed soldiers (in warehouses, bad food, bad hygiene conditions) but not officers (good food, British style houses, etc.). The second assumption is that H1N1 flu is severe and deadly. There is substantial evidence that that is not the case and in fact the mortality rate from H1N1 flu is much less than seasonal flu (3,4). The third assumption is that the vaccine will work. The immunologic response is not a guarantee that the vaccine will reduce severe infections and mortality. Demonstration of that benefit requires large RCTs (randomized controlled trials), which are lacking for both H1N1 vaccines as well as for seasonal flu vaccines. The fourth assumption is that the H1N1 vaccine will provide similar immunity to the natural infection. Immunity to viral flu has a very interesting peculiarity that is known as the "original antigenic sin" (5). This concept means that the first flu virus we are exposed to generates the strongest immune response and that immunity lasts for over 50 years. It explains the fact that people over 50 years of age appear to have some immunity to the H1N1 virus because a similar influenza A virus, circulated globally from 1918 to 1957. Thus it appears that natural infection creates immunity for 50 years at no cost as compared to influenza vaccines, which require one (or two) shots annually to achieve a lesser degree of immunity. We therefore recommend that most if not all H1N1 vaccine be used as part of placebo controlled RCTs to establish whether the benefits outweigh the harms. Without such an approach, in September 2010 we will again be in a position of not knowing who to vaccinate. Similar RCTs are also badly needed for seasonal flu vaccine as the long-term effects of annual flu vaccination are unknown, and there is a good chance that the harms of annual flu vaccination as compared to no vaccination outweigh the benefits. 1. Influenza A (H1N1) 2009 monovalent. http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/ucm181950.htm 2. Villanueva T, Gérvas A. Spain and swine flu. CMAJ. 2009. http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/eletters/181/6-7/E102 3. Assessment of the influenza A (H1N1) pandemic on selected countries in the southern hemisphere: Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand and Uruguay. Department of Health and Human Services and other USG Departments for the White House National Security Council. 26th August 2009. http://flu.gov/professional/global/final.pdf 4. Collignon PJ. Mass vaccination against swine flu: could it cause more harm than good? http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/339/sep03_2/b3471#219801 5. Couch RB, Kasel JA. Immunity to influenza in man. Ann Rev Microbiol. 1983;37:529-49. Competing interests: None declared |
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David A. Groneberg, Full professor of medicine and director Berlin, David Quarcoo, Cristian Scutaru, Albert Nienhaus, and Andrés de Roux
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A/H1N1 vaccine in Germany: Analyzing the reasons for a low acceptability N. Stafford recently stated that only 12% of Germans say they will have H1N1 vaccine after row blows up over safety of adjuvants. 1 As one reason for this low acceptability, it is stated that concerns were growing in Germany after news was leaked that government employees and politicians will be given an alternative vaccine. For the public, the state and federal health departments ordered 50 million doses of Pandemrix which is the adjuvanted A/H1N1 vaccine that is produced by GlaxoSmithKline. This vaccine includes adjuvants that may cause side effects. For government employees and politicians, an alternative vaccine without the questioned adjuvants was ordered. In the article, a number of media releases citing scientists, politicians and physicians with controversal opinions is cited and polls that show that only 12% of Germans definitely plan to be vaccinated against H1N1. 1 This is in striking contrast to i.e. the results of Lau et al who reported that about 45% of the Hong Kong general population would be highly likely take up vaccination if it was free. 2 We assessed potential reasons of the extreme low acceptability and conducted a survey among outpatient physicians in the German capital Berlin that was supported by the State department of health, the statuary accident insurance and the State chamber of physicians.3 Analysing the responses of 469 physicians we found that 73,8% (346/469) are of the opinion that the media discussion is unobjective, while only 23,9% (112/469) believe that the discussion is objective (2,3% gave no answer, 11/469) (Fig. 1). In the light of the extremely low acceptability and the discussion on mandatory vaccinations,4 we believe that improved information politics have to be evaluated against the background of future pandemics. David A. Groneberg, director and professor, 1 David Quarcoo, associate director and head physician,1 Cristian Scutaru, research associate, 1 Albert Nienhaus, associate professor and department head, 2 and Andrés de Roux, research associate and physician 1 1 Charité - Institute of Occupational Medicine, Free University
Berlin and Humboldt-University Berlin, Berlin, Germany;
No competing interests. 1 Stafford N. Only 12% of Germans say they will have H1N1 vaccine after row blows up over safety of adjuvants.BMJ 2009;339:b4335 2 Lau JT, Yeung NC, Choi KC, Cheng MY, Tsui HY, Griffiths S. Acceptability of A/H1N1 vaccination during pandemic phase of influenza A/H1N1 in Hong Kong: population based cross sectional survey. BMJ 2009;339:b4164 3 Berlin State Chamber of Physicians: http://www.aerztekammer- berlin.de/40presse/15_meldungen/00659_FOBI_Neue_Grippe/index.htm (last update: 2009-11-19) 4 Stewart AM. Mandatory Vaccination of Health Care Workers. N Engl J Med. 2009 Nov 4. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 19890107
Legend figure 1: Opinion of Berlin physicians towards A/H1N1 discussion in the German media. Competing interests: None declared |
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Bo A Engwall, Independant analysist SE-75226
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A previous comment from October refers to natural immunity by infection, among other things. I and my wife Dr Ann-Cathrin Engwall (born Svensson) (PhD molecular cell biology with experience from Paul Erlich Institute, Uppsala University, vaccine development etc) have studied this subject lately. During the early stages of the swine flu pandemic in Sweden late this past summer I observed through the statistics that elderly seemed to be better protected here as well as in many other countries that were earlier affected by the swine flu. My wife, PhD in molecular cell biology and well educated and experiencied in immunology and virology, at that time wrote a swedish article about the neglected risk of a potentially suboptimal strategy when Sweden planned to vaccinate our whole population against the swine flu virus A/H1N1. The reason for the critizism of this strategy, which I agreed upon, was mainly that the swine flu was very mild, well spread but very few dead, so far in the world and also here in Sweden. Furthermore, in our case the vaccination campaign might cause more damage than it prevents, since through vaccination if it is successful you simultaneously most likely prevent the swine flu virus from infecting the cells and thus inhibiting the generating of a broad cell-mediated T-cell response, especially CD8+, which could be more useful in the the near future. The broadness of this immunity response, she claimed in august 2009, must come from internal swine flu virus proteins and their many different epitopes of the MOC I presentation on the surface of the infected cells. Now if there would be a second wave of the swine flu pandemic - more pathogenic than the first one - there could be a non-neglectable risk for the current wave one vaccine Pandemrix to work poorly against the wave two virus due to possible mutation or mutations of the surface proteins of the virus that could in fact be one of the reasons for a second wave to be generated. There is theoretical study that deals with a similar situation http://tinyurl.com/yapfede "Our results indicate that avoiding a second influenza epidemic is plausible given sufficient levels of cross-protection are attained via natural infection during an early (herald) wave of infection or vaccination campaigns prior to a second wave. Furthermore, interventions aimed at mitigating the first pandemic wave may be counterproductive by increasing the chances of a second wave of infection that could potentially be more virulent than the first." You can conclude that natural immunization by the influenza A subtype itself in some cases can prove to be an advantage in the short term future compared to a immunization by vaccination which normally only can address the surface proteins HA and NA. However this discussed cell-mediated partially protective MOC I CD8+ response may also be similarly useful under other circumstances i.e. in a more long term view. In this study http://www.pnas.org/content/106/9/3455.full.pdf+html? sid=a243d023-3cd1-4357-afe1-f77e8707d52e they examine the responses to a common influenza virus and two reassortant strains of the Spanish flu 1918 H1N1 virus, each containing HA and NA surface antigens which are closely linked to that strain's potent virulence. The effects of these strains was compared with those of a 2004 Vietnam isolate of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1. Unlike the seasonal flu which poses the greatest threat to very young, very old and those with immunity weaknesses, the Spanish flu severely affected especially rather young healthy adults supposed to be strong. In the case of the highly pathological avian H5N1-subtype virus, statistics of human deaths reveal a similar trend where the elderly seem better protected. The natural cell-mediated response is generated with a MHC I based presentation of peptides not only from the HA and NA surface proteins but also from the internal proteins which often are more conserved, e.g. due to less evolutionary pressure to change/mutate since the cell-mediated response allows the virus to infect cells often leading to some further spreading of the virus to other people and due to that a internal changes might hurt the function of the virus or its interaction with the host cell. If on the other hand such a mutation hurts the host more, the host could die more rapidly and thus could reduce the likelihood of infecting other people. Therefore the conservation of internal proteins should be supported by natural selection to a higher degree than surface proteins HA and NA. Thus there is a logical possibility for completely different subtypes of influenza A to have some internal proteins in common. Now look at this article (with Peter C Doherty, the 1996 Nobel prize winner in medicine/physiology). http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no01/05-1237.htm Among other things discussed they "primed mice with the H1N1 PR8 strain and the H3N2 X31 strain followed by a challenge with A/Vietnam/1203/2004, one of the most lethal H5N1 viruses, which causes severe pathologic changes, even in ducks. While 9 of 10 naive mice died, 9 of 10 primed mice survived past day 10 of infectious challenge and recovered substantial weight (Figure). The fact that both groups lost weight indicated protection was occurring by delayed cell-mediated responses, rather than by the "immediate" cross-protective antibody response." So mice could get a highly protective effect against an otherwise lethal H5N1 strain, most likely from the cell-mediated MOC I CD8+ based response to conserved epitopes of internal proteins. This suggests there is a high probability that the protection elderly humans seem to have against the highly pathogenic avian flu of subtype H5N1 is at least to some extent derived from the higher historic influenza exposure elderly people on a probability base have gone through in their lifes. My wife and I late last summer realized that the cell-mediated protection had the potential to explain what we found and why it not only was very valuble for elderly people in the swine flu pandemic, but could be valuble in the future for all those now infected by the relatively mild swine flu. In Sweden the death rate in the swine flu is very low, with just around 15 dead so far with nearly all from the high risk groups which every one think should have been vaccinated anyhow. Now just recently in October a new study presented further theoretical and experimental evidence or proof for the existance of the, in our view potentially vitaly important cell-mediated MOC I and CD8+ based partial human protection against different subtypes of influenza A that is generated by earlier occasions of natural immunization through any other influenza or influenzas of any subtype as long as there is a sufficient conservation of epitopes from internal proteins. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/11/13/0911580106.full.pdf+html Some implications for the populations and on vaccination strategies : Nothing so far points against our conclusion that the cell-mediated protection is clearly neglected today in some influenza vaccination strategies. A person let say 15 years old and who never has catched the flu, either because of "good luck" or yearly vaccination against seasonal flu, could be extremely vulnerable to a highly virulent avian H5N1 pandemic influenza virus with a high risk for death if there is no new effective vaccine available. I have a also a new hypothezis that the extremely high number of swine flu related reported deaths in e.g. the USA, around 7 times more than the reported world average per capita at this point, may to some significant degree be explained by the extremely wide spread vaccination programmes against seasonal flu, especially if they ar directed to very young people. CDC recommend yearly vaccination for seasonal influenza in the USA for +6 mĺn - 18 year old and 50+. There is a risk younger age groups indirectely get partially deprived of natural cell-mediated protection against future pathogenic pandemic influenza A viruses. Even the on the average rather mild swin flu affects USA severely at this very moment, while countries like Sweden, Germany, Portugal etc seems rather unaffected as in terms of deaths so far, but not in terms of number of affected, thus suggesting an indication of a better immune response through the type of cell-mediated protection discussed before. Sweden though with our first time experiment of mass vaccination of the whole population may be at a higher risk in the future than before, with our new experiment or strategical effort to deprive or reduce the chance for the individuals of the population to undergo the broader cell- mediated natural immunization process associated with catching a mild flu and generated by the epitopes from the internal proteins of the swine flu virus. On the other hand both young and old who have gone through a seasonal flu or two or another pandemic influenza, will have the very valuble advantage of having a naturally generated cellmediated protection which will be partially effective against e.g. the avian flu virus if a sufficient number of nucleoproteins of the avian flu virus are recognised by the cell-mediated protective immune systeme through its memory of the nucleoproteins from all earlier influenzas they have gone through. In any past pandemic influenza as far as is known, which is the only case where elderly have an empirical influenza protective advantage, we see the empirical evidence for this advantage repeated but we now also know the obvious logical immunological explanation for it, thanks to the new scientific studies. Thus you can conclude, that with a high probability there is a significant protective factor of having been naturally immunized by influenza A subtype viruses before you are exposed to a another subtype which might be highly pathogenic such as a potential pandemic avian H5N1- subtype. Furthermore there is not only an advantage with vaccination against mild influenza subtype A viruses, especially for young healthy persons, if you consider the thereby associated elimination of the advantage of a broader protective natural immunization process which could otherwise have occured. Influenza vaccination is most effective for high risk groups and probably should be more carefully used for most of the population. There is an american study that found "During the period from 1989 to 1997 the vaccination rate for people aged over 65 in the US increased from 30 to 67 per cent. Despite this increase, mortality and hospitalisation rates continued to increase rather than decline as would be expected if the vaccine was optimally effective." http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-3/Benefits-of- flu-vaccine-substantially-overestimated-says-study-6985-2/ Maximal vaccination rate is not always the optimal rate... Competing interests: None declared |
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