New Study Finds Flu Virus "Paralyzes" Immune System

mmmscience writes with this excerpt from Examiner.com: "A study coming out of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has found that the influenza virus manages to dysregulate the immune system, allowing other infections to thrive in the body. This discovery, coming at an opportune time as the world battles the new H1N1 flu outbreak, may be the first step in understanding why the flu can cause such high mortality rates in normally healthy individuals."

Comments

ScienceFUD

[DynaSoar]

"the influenza virus manages to dysregulate the immune system"

is very different from

"they also found a decreased response of toll-like receptors, which activate immune cell responses as a result of invading microbes."

The latter is not only an accurate accounting of the result, it doesn't overgeneralize the implications. The mechanism studied is only part of the highly complex immune system. The results do not suggest, as does the headline, that the entire immune system gets hosed.