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

So the question becomes

[bigattichouse]

Are there symbiotic relationships between the flu and pneumonia (or other) bacteria - where they travel together. This would allow the flu to break down the guard, bacteria to move in - and then both to be spread by the next sneeze or nose-wipe-doorhandle-grab.

Re:So the question becomes

[omris]

I would guess that it's more coincidence than symbiosis. Most of the things that an influenza virus would find helpful would also be helpful to, say, Streptococcus pneumoniae. Since most infectious organisms are vulnerable to similar immune system defenses, shutting them down just sort of accidentally helps out everyone.

But you could make the argument that these organisms evolved similarities to take advantage of just such strategies. Chicken or egg and all that.

Re:So the question becomes

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, Ronnie Michael Smith at the Foundation for Studying Flu discovered this - it's called Glandular Proto-immune Limitation syndrome. Swine Flu is the third variant to be discovered so far, and by far the most pernicious, because it is immune to usual antivirals. It causes most fatailities among those of employable age but who get only limited excercise, with crippling consequences for businesses that do not take extreme measures to exclude it from their buildings.

Quoting RMS, "We at the FSF have created GPL3 to plug gaps in earlier GPL versions. We expect it to spread rapidly into desktops across the world, and hopefully it will allow us to target more effectively any non-compliant corporations".

Mortality rates and the flu

[ergo98]

may be the first step in understanding why the flu can cause such high mortality rates in normally healthy individuals

They speak generally about "the flu", but then use the extreme outliers of the Spanish flu of 1918, and the worst fears of the H1N1 virus, as their examples.

My understanding was that the flu virus hits the immuno-compromised much harder -- the young and the elderly being the most at risk, with it being a day or two off work for people with normal immune systems.

H1N1 is getting a lot of attention primarily because it was outside of the norm for the flu, hitting healthy individuals hard in Mexico, although not repeating that behaviour elsewhere.

Re:Mortality rates and the flu

[Chlorine Trifluoride]

Flu does hit them much harder, but the reason that the Spanish flu killed some many young, healthy people was because it launched a cytokine storm, something that was replicated in H5N1 (remember that?). So far, H1N1 does not seem to do this, although TFA suggests that it might.

Re:Mortality rates and the flu

[Andy Dodd]

Actually the problem with the 1918 flu virus was that it had unusually high mortality rates for people with strong immune systems.

The reasoning was that a lot of people died not from the infection itself, but from an *excessive immune response* (cytokine storm).

The whole swine flu paranoia is getting out of hand, especially since so far the actual severity of the swine flu is nowhere near what people are making it out to be. I now have to eat offsite at work because all of the food that I like to eat has been pulled from the cafeteria (all self-serve foods have been pulled except prepackaged items, I almost always eat a build-your-own sandwich and a cookie).

Funny thing is, as a Type I diabetic, who is at unusually high risk for problems if I catch influenza, I'm far more worried about the health effects of this damn menu change than the possibility I might catch H1N1.

Re:Mortality rates and the flu

[ColdWetDog]

Actually, TFA didn't say much at all (surprise). Cytokine Storm has been a term used to describe the results of influenza on the immune system for some time now. The fact that it triggers the Toll-like receptor proteins isn't particularly surprising.I'm really not sure What the Big Deal TFA is supposed to be announcing. We already know this stuff and have known it for some time.

Of course, this could be Nobel quality research and it would be hard to tell, but I'm not getting all warm and fuzzies here....

Re:Mortality rates and the flu

[Obispus]

You don't seem to have understood TFA. A cytokine storm consists of an excess of cytokines, and study participants were indeed found to have elevated cytokine levels, presumably as a the response to the flu virus--although not at the point of actual storms occurring. Concentrations of toll-like receptors were found to be lower than normal, therefore indicating an immune system less resilient to other opportunistic pathogens (e.g., bacteria) that might ultimately cause the death of the patient.

Re:H1N1

[Jeian]

I don't know what's worse, that you made that reference, or that I understood it.

Was it really the flu?

[Hoyty1]

I always wondered why people who get the flu have such widely varying symptoms. This offers me a bit of incite, especially with my powers of wild speculation!

I've never had a doctor specifically tell me I had the flu but being the average Joe that I am I'll believe just about anything someone tells me. As long as they do it with authority! So it always seemed strange to me that my "flus" have had ranges of the sniffles to constant vomiting and other such disgusting bodily functions. Maybe it's because the flu caused something else lurking about to gain a foothold and attack with the vigor of a cracked out wookie.

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.

NOT NEWS

[TheMeuge]

May I be the first one to suggest that this is not news?

Most viruses combat the immune system... especially the innate immune system, which is largely responsible for the cytokine response. They have to, or the infection would never progress to clinical stages.

Influenza is not an exception, and there is a mountain of literature about flu's ability to suppress innate immunity. There's hundreds of papers about influenza's ability to supress NF-kappaB, type I interferon, etc...

Swine Flu BS

[XPeter]

The "Swine Flu" is being blown out of proportions in terms of it's severity so that all the big drug companies can get there bailout, too. The large population of retards who believe everything they hear from the mainstream media get scared, thus causing the government to order millions of dollars worth of "Tamiflu" and drugs alike. Doesn't anyone else see this?

Hold on...there's a knock at the d-%!$*%& NO CARRIER

Re:Weird site behavior

[sgbett]

Its because your anti-virus has been paralysed.

strangely enough

[circletimessquare]

the flu virus has also been found to paralyze the attentions of the mass media industry

Study Very Preliminary

[gpronger]

The article in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology raises a critical point, but is based upon some very limited patient data. For instance they classify the patients studied into "Severe", "Moderate" and RSV (not respiratory syncytial virus) and controls, with each group composed of 10, 5, 6, and 24 individuals respectfully. Also, the ages were relatively broad; for severe the average was 3.4 years (0.2-12.6 years), for moderate the average was 6.3 years (3 months-12 years), and the RVS group was 2.2 years (22 days-4 years), while the controls were 6.9 years (0.5-19 years).

My point being is that the potential indication of the research needs to be picked up and validated with a more comprehensive study.

Wait for Peer Review

[wdhowellsr]

It's seems odd that the general acceptance of the cytokine storm creating an overabundance of T-Cell and Macrophages is now being questioned. Everything written so far has indicated that the stronger the patient's immune system, the greater the response.

I'd wait until we see a peer reviewed study in a major medical journal.

William D Howell

Vitamin D seems rather important for fighting flu

[vincecate]

I am convinced that Vitamin D is important for resisting the flu. It is produced in your skin from sunlight. It is important for your immune system. During the winter most people don't get enough, which seems to be why the flu is more common then. Very young and very old people get even less sun than normal and are worse hit by the flu. The same flu virus is not nearly as deadly during the summer. The recommended daily allowance of Vitamin D was calculated to be enough keep people from getting rickets but is far below what your body will produce given 15 minute of sun. http://www.virologyj.com/content/5/1/29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season#Mechanism_for_seasonal_nature_of_influenza (yes I added the Vitamin-D stuff but look at the links)

For the record...

[keith_nt4]

...I work in an IT department of a hospital in Northern California. I don't wear the stupid masks, I haven't had any shots and I've been regularly going around to every possible department/area of the hospital during this whole flue scare for (and for the last eight months). I don't have the Swine Flu or whatever they call it these days. Actually so far as I've heard no one else I work with has caught it either. I hope everybody can start to relax about this!