Are Flu Vaccines harming the Elderly?

Have you ever wondered why so many people, in particular those over the age of 65, react adversely to the flu vaccination? How many times have you heard that, after receiving the flu vaccine, a friend or loved one has developed flu-like symptoms?  At last, after many years of speculation, scientists in London believe they have the answer to our questions.

A group of scientists led by Olga Sobolev from Kings College London believe that they have discovered why, after receiving flu vaccinations containing adjuvants, many healthy adults over the age 35 develop adverse reactions within hours of vaccination. In a paper published by Nature Immunology titled Adjuvanted influenza-H1N1 vaccination reveals lymphoid signatures of age-dependent early responses and of clinical adverse events, they wrote:

Adjuvanted vaccines afford invaluable protection against disease, and the molecular and cellular changes they induce offer direct insight into human immunobiology. Here we show that within 24 h of receiving adjuvanted swine flu vaccine, healthy individuals made expansive, complex molecular and cellular responses that included overt lymphoid as well as myeloid contributions.

Unexpectedly, this early response was subtly but significantly different in people older than ~35 years. Wide-ranging adverse clinical events can seriously confound vaccine adoption, but whether there are immunological correlates of these is unknown.

Here we identify a molecular signature of adverse events that was commonly associated with an existing B cell phenotype. Thus immunophenotypic variation among healthy humans may be manifested in complex pathophysiological responses.

In simplified terms, this means that after completing complex immunological research, the team was able to determine why, after receiving the H1N1 flu vaccine containing an adjuvant, many of the recipients over the age of 35 developed flu-like adverse reactions within hours of vaccination.

Speaking from King’s College London, study co-author Adrian Hayday stated that:

The gene signature in the peripheral blood . . . is not a smoking gun at this point, but it’s a strong association and quite compelling.

The Scientist, one of the many leading medical journals reporting the news, stated that:

Previous studies have identified reasons why some people fail to respond to flu vaccines while others do, but few have analyzed the molecular correlates of adverse responses.

They continued:

The researchers found no links between feeling sick after the vaccine and age, gender, or the quality of an individual’s immune response. However, they found that participants who reported severe adverse reactions had a transient increase in the expression of a small group of genes one day after they received the shot.

These participants also overexpressed several genes in developing B cells both before and after vaccination. Although all these individuals were healthy, approximately 25 percent of them had higher than normal levels of autoantibodies for thyroid hormones.

The Medical Express, another journal reporting on this paper wrote:

Scientists are eager to understand why some people experience such adverse reactions while others do not, because they believe it could lead to better vaccines, or perhaps even breakthroughs in understanding infections and the immune response.

In this latest effort, the team in the U.K. conducted a study of people vaccinated against the H1N1 influenza strain—the vaccination also included an adjuvant meant to enhance immune response. All participants were encouraged to report adverse reactions which led to follow up testing by the team members.

The research group found that approximately 20 percent of those vaccinated experienced an adverse response to some degree—the team focused their efforts on these people, looking at changes in the immune response, as compared to those who did not experience an adverse reaction.

They continued:

It is still not clear if the same findings would occur with vaccinations for other diseases or even other strains of flu, but the team notes that the results do offer a pattern for testing that could be used going forward that could eventually culminate in better vaccinations in general.

If the scientists’ research is correct, then this paper could pave the way for scientists to fully understand why so many of our children and babies suffer from severe adverse reactions, including autism, neurological defects and autoimmune disease within hours of receiving routine vaccinations.

It was unclear which adjuvant was added to the H1N1 vaccination being tested by the U.K. scientists but in all probability it was the AS03, an adjuvant system composed of DL-a-tocopherol, squalene and polysorbate 80 in a 3mL vial. If so, then this was the same adjuvant used by GlaxoSmithKline in their flu vaccination, Pandemrix, which was later found to be responsible for the rise in the cases of narcolepsy amongst children in Europe.

See: Insight: GSK vacce Medical Xpress ine ingredient scrutinized for narcolepsy clues.

Although the Medical Express were keen to point out to readers that to date there has been no evidence linking vaccinations to autism, the Kings College paper does leave parents with many unanswered questions. Despite the constant reassurances from governments and the pharmaceutical industry, there has been no scientific evidence offered to prove that vaccines do not cause autism and therefore, parents remain unconvinced.

Could this latest paper from the U.K., be yet another nail in the coffin of the pharmaceutical industry?