Comments on: Vaccines and the new H1N1: The tl;dr version http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2009/05/01/vaccines-and-the-new-h1n1-the-tldr-version/ Meddling with things mankind is not meant to understand. Also, pictures of my kids Sat, 25 Jun 2011 18:45:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: John Kelsey http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2009/05/01/vaccines-and-the-new-h1n1-the-tldr-version/comment-page-1/#comment-22769 John Kelsey Sun, 03 May 2009 20:52:18 +0000 http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/?p=1036#comment-22769 This raises a few additional questions in my mind: a. Is there any good way to guess how much additional protection we're likely to see from previous years' vaccines? I guess that breaks down into "how much help is a five-year old flu shot?" and "how likely is it that one of those old strains happens to give good cross protection?" b. Why do we only put three strains of influenza into the vaccine, rather than (say) five or ten? Is it just economics of vaccine production? Is there some limit after which you overload your APCs or whatever and don't get a good immune response to all of them? This raises a few additional questions in my mind:

a. Is there any good way to guess how much additional protection we’re likely to see from previous years’ vaccines?

I guess that breaks down into “how much help is a five-year old flu shot?” and “how likely is it that one of those old strains happens to give good cross protection?”

b. Why do we only put three strains of influenza into the vaccine, rather than (say) five or ten? Is it just economics of vaccine production? Is there some limit after which you overload your APCs or whatever and don’t get a good immune response to all of them?

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