We know from talking about arthritis the past couple of weeks that Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a type of inflammatory arthritis and Osteoarthritis (OA) is not. So I was wondering, since getting a H1N1 flu shot is a very popular subject right now, does it even work for people with Rheumatoid arthritis who have problems with their immune system and are probably taking medication that suppresses their immune system. Well, the CDC does recommend that people with inflammatory arthritis get flu shots. They also recommend that they do not get the nasal-spray, since it contains live, but weakened flu viruses. They recommend the flu shot since it contains flu viruses that have been killed, so it is safer for people who have weaker immune systems. The CDC only had recommendations so I looked further and found a study published in the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases that showed proof that people with rheumatoid arthritis who were taking immunosuppressant drugs were able to respond to the flu shot. Their responses were not strong, but at least the flu vaccine was making the infections milder, making it worth getting.
08 November 2009
H1N1 and Rheumatoid arthritis
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I'm a little confused by the part where you said "They recommend the flu shot since it contains flu viruses that have been killed"......I thought that the vaccines normally contains viruses that were weaken but not killed?
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, how does it (the flu vaccine) trigger our immune system to make antibodies against the virus if they had been killed already?
Sunny, you make a good point. Vaccines can contain either attenuated live or heat killed pathogens. Vaccines can also consist of subunits of proteins unique to a pathogen or peptides.
ReplyDeleteInjecting killed influenza into a person will still expose them to antigenic epitopes on that organism. However, the immune response to a dead pathogen is normally smaller than to a live one because the pathogen can be easily cleared (it isn't replicating to tip the numbers in its favor). The bottom line is that depending on the context either live or killed pathogens may be used.
Why do you think flu shots normally consist of killed virus?
Oh, I get it. So....the injection of killed virus (flu shots) is strong enough to activated our immune system to built antibodies against the virus but the antigens are also too weak to raise a severe viral infection in us?
ReplyDeleteSunny, you are exactly right. The killed (actually, it's a mix of proteins from the killed virus) preparation can't cause disease, even if the recipient was immunodeficient.
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