A universal flu jab is ready to be tested on humans and could put an end to people needing annual flu vaccinations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a bad flu year, around 30,000 people in the UK die from flu, or from pneumonia, which can be a complication of flu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flu vaccines are available on the NHS for over-50s, pregnant people and those with certain health conditions, but they don’t cover every strain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, every year before flu season starts, experts predict which strains are likely to be more common and select three or four to be included in the next seasonal flu vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Manufacturers then need to make and distribute the vaccine – and in the meantime the virus may change, potentially making the vaccine less effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A universal jab that covers all flu strains could eliminate these stages and potential problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The jab is based on mRNA technology, which had its breakthrough moment with the success of COVID vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
mRNA vaccines teach our cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response inside our bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new universal flu vaccine uses a specific portion of a flu protein, hemagglutinin (HA), to produce a broad immune response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While one portion of the HA protein, known as the head, tends to change as the flu virus spreads and evolves, a more stable portion – the stem – evolves very slowly and is similar across many different types of the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By using the HA stem as the basis for a vaccine, researchers hope to induce long-term immunity against a broad range of flu virus types.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A universal flu jab is ready to be tested on humans and could put an end to people needing annual flu vaccinations. In a bad flu year, around 30,000 people in the UK die from flu, or from pneumonia, which can be a complication of flu. Flu vaccines are available on the NHS for over-50s, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[2579,205,193,2578,2372],"class_list":["post-6740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-flu","tag-health","tag-news","tag-universal","tag-vaccine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6742,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6740\/revisions\/6742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}