Swine Flu Survivors Develop Super Immunity
Thursday, January 27th, 2011If you were one of the lucky people to both catch and survive the Swine Flu during the 2009-2010 pandemic, the according to a new study, your immune system may have become supercharged. It seems that the Swine Flu virus was totally unknown to many that caught it and the body did not know how to cure it.
Somewhere in the vicinity of 60 million people came down with the Swine Flu last year, and even though death by flu was much lighter than in prior years, there were still around 18,000 deaths from the disease. What is surprising is what comes to the survivors is a type of super immunity. They seem to have antibodies that are capable to kill any type of flu virus and not just the swine flu.
Research has shown that survivors of the H1N1 virus have an amazing immune response. The researchers say that five of the antibodies they have identified are capable of fighting off all known seasonal flu’s, the Spanish flu virus that killed around 50 million people in the 1918 pandemic and even the bird flu variant H5N1.
The researchers feel that it is how unique the Swine Flu was that triggered that kind of reaction from the immune system. Since the body did not know what the exact invasion was, it began to create antibodies for everything taking hints from every flu virus it had encountered to date. By the time a person had completely recovered they seemed to be immune to every type of flu around. Researchers are unsure if the H1N1 vaccine will give the same type of immunity that actually having the swine flu will give. More research is needed.
Now onto the really interesting part, An Oxford University Virus expert Dr. Sarah Gilbert is feeling that this immunity from swine flu survivors in the relatively near future could lead to a super vaccine. This vaccine could give you immunity to every type of flu, a universal influenza vaccine.






