Influenza viruses may have fewer routes for escaping vaccines than previously thought.
Flu vaccines target a viral protein called haemagglutinin, which mutates frequently, rendering vaccines ineffective. Derek Smith of the University of Cambridge, UK, and Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and their colleagues studied how the haemagglutinin protein has mutated to evade vaccines — a process called antigenic drift — over a 35-year period from 1968 to 2003.
They found that seven of the ten antigenic drift events in the past three decades were caused by a change in just one amino acid in the protein. These changes occurred at only seven places in the protein, all of which cluster near a region that binds to host cells. The results could one day lead to more-effective flu vaccines.
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A more predictable flu. Nature 503, 441 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/503441a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/503441a
