Irene Wright | The Charlotte Observer (TNS)
Before March 2020, it was hard to imagine a global pandemic in the modern age.
Now, it’s hard to imagine our lives without one.
As COVID-19 has become less of an active part of our days and more a quick thought when we have a runny nose or cough, it’s time to think about what comes next — and how to stop another pandemic.
A group of researchers had the future in mind when they asked if current COVID-19 vaccines and boosters could also protect your body against future outbreaks in a study published in the journal Nature on May 15.
Here’s what you need to know:
What is immune imprinting?
Researchers from Washington University’s School of Medicine in St. Louis evaluated the ability of the COVID-19 shots to build up memory in the immune system through a process called immune imprinting.
“Immune imprinting is a phenomenon in which prior antigenic experiences influence responses to subsequent infection or vaccination,” according to the study.
This means that when the human body is exposed to an infection, whether by becoming infected or receiving a vaccination, the immune system can build up defenses against it, and those defenses stay in the body even when the infection has left.
“Imprinting is the natural result of how immunological memory works. A first vaccination triggers the development of memory immune cells,” researchers said in a May 17 news release from Washington University. “When people receive a second vaccination quite similar to the first, it reactivates memory cells elicited by the first vaccine. These memory cells dominate and shape the immune response to the subsequent vaccine.”
But since your body holds onto some “immunity,” it can make it difficult to create a vaccination for the following year that complements an already established immune response and doesn’t interfere.
Doctors already have to deal with this problem.
The annual flu vaccine is updated and adapted each year before the…
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