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New Study Finds Flu Virus "Paralyzes" Immune System

Posted by timothy on from the now-that's-just-stunning dept.

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."

13 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. So the question becomes by bigattichouse · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    meh
  2. Mortality rates and the flu by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Mortality rates and the flu by Chlorine+Trifluoride · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Mortality rates and the flu by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

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      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    3. Re:Mortality rates and the flu by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Informative

      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....

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  3. Re:H1N1 by Jeian · · Score: 3, Funny

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

  4. ScienceFUD by DynaSoar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

    --
    "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
  5. NOT NEWS by TheMeuge · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

  6. Swine Flu BS by XPeter · · Score: 4, Funny

    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

    --
    "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
  7. Re:Weird site behavior by sgbett · · Score: 4, Funny

    Its because your anti-virus has been paralysed.

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    Invaders must die
  8. strangely enough by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  9. Study Very Preliminary by gpronger · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  10. Vitamin D seems rather important for fighting flu by vincecate · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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)