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mcdeltat 2 hours ago [-]
What intrigued me the most is why their vaccine reduces allergic reactions too. If the allergic reaction is an immune response, why does administering the vaccine which increases immune response result in a decreased allergic reaction? I'd expect the opposite.
rincebrain 2 hours ago [-]
I would speculate it's something like, if your innate immune system is running "hotter", it's going to reduce the amount of time it takes to clear anything it runs into, leading to less time spent inflaming anything, in a similar fashion to how it significantly reduced viral payloads, leading to negligible symptoms when the adaptive immune system batted cleanup.
kenjackson 2 hours ago [-]
Allergies are not simply overactive immune response. It’s the wrong type of response. What’s really intriguing is how much we can do innate immunity that we have done relatively little with.
cameldrv 18 minutes ago [-]
This seems too good to be true. Respiratory infections kill and debilitate a lot of people. If cranking up the innate immune system all the time reduced illness with no downsides, you'd think evolution would have done it already, but it didn't, which makes me think there's probably a downside, and the fact that the innate immune system is only cranked up when a pathogen is detected is probably because the downside is worth it in the presence of a pathogen but not otherwise.
torgoguys 7 hours ago [-]
I don't know much about this, but wouldn't the description of this imply you're stimulating the body to be in an a long-term situation that would be commonly viewed as unpleasant (inflamed, maybe nasal drainage, that type of thing) with the positive tradeoff that you get fewer actual infections?
Animats 5 hours ago [-]
Right, that's been mentioned elsewhere.
A new area of research has opened up. This approach may be more useful for treatment than prevention. It's not really a vaccine; it's more like an induced vaccine response. Keeping the immune system in that state full time might be a problem. But after an infection, that's what's wanted.
ipaddr 56 minutes ago [-]
Some autoimmune diseases are a result of an immune system always on.
rossdavidh 3 hours ago [-]
I think that "vaccine" is really not the right word to use for this; they sound as different as bandages and blood transfusions. But if it works as advertised, it could be useful if used in the right situation.
I do wonder if the kind of people who got vaccinated 10 times against Covid-19 will end up trying to get a sniff of this every month? Kind of like how we overuse antibiotics in cleaners. It seems like it would be best if saved for an "oh shoot" kind of situation.
xattt 1 hours ago [-]
Inoculation?
MathMonkeyMan 6 hours ago [-]
Yep! But you are also a mouse who has limited venues in which to complain.
I wonder if the vaccine causes inflammatory and other unpleasant responses when administered. If so, I wonder if those responses go away after the last dose, when the three months of protection begin.
Here are the two paragraphs that I found interesting:
> The new vaccine, for now known as GLA-3M-052-LS+OVA, mimics the T cell signals that directly stimulate innate immune cells in the lungs. It also contains a harmless antigen, an egg protein called ovalbumin or OVA, which recruits T cells into the lungs to maintain the innate response for weeks to months.
> In the study, mice were given a drop of the vaccine in their noses. Some recieved multiple doses, given a week apart. Each mouse was then exposed to one type of respiratory virus. With three doses of the vaccine, mice were protected against SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses for at least three months.
Terr_ 4 hours ago [-]
> It also contains a harmless antigen, an egg protein called ovalbumin or OVA
Here's hoping the final product doesn't have a side-effect of inducing an allergy to the main component of egg-whites.
Although even if that happened... Would it only apply to the raw materials, as opposed to cooked products where the ovalbumin was denatured by heat?
Edit: No, wait! What about "safe to eat" cookie-dough, which uses heat-treated flour and pasteurized eggs as ingredients!? The might still have intact ovalbumin, and obviously I can't give it up.
shiroiuma 1 hours ago [-]
And what about people who eat actual raw egg? I routinely eat freshly-made cake batter (made with raw eggs; I just clean the bowl, I don't actually gobble tons of raw cake batter), for instance. It's perfectly safe because I live in a country where they actually check eggs for salmonella before selling them and people routinely eat raw eggs on top of things.
kuerbel 25 minutes ago [-]
Raw flour is just as dangerous. It can contain e coli and salmonella, among other bacteria.
modeless 46 minutes ago [-]
The tradeoff might not be something unpleasant. For example, it might be that the immune system uses a lot more energy in this state, which would be bad for survival in the wild with limited resources but probably harmless or even beneficial for modern humans with abundant food.
rzzzt 6 hours ago [-]
Me neither, but I got something similar from the abstract that I was about to ask, so adding it here: "Following infection, vaccinated mice mounted rapid pathogen-specific T cell and antibody responses and formed ectopic lymphoid structures in the lung."
That latter term (ectopic lymphoid structure) comes up in connection with persistent inflammation where the immune system sets up camp near the problem point. Is this good or bad? Do these go away once the infection clears up?
dillydogg 4 hours ago [-]
These are pretty common, physiologic structures associated with infections. They can be just a handful of cells on a slide or be quite large, and I don't know what they found in these infections. I didn't read the original paper. The ectopic lymphoid structures go away after the infection resolves. It seems that the immune system has ways to set up mini lymph node architecture right by the site of infections, which is very sensible. The same process is going on in a more organized way in the draining lymph node in parallel. Research into these was really hot in the 2010s, but people don't seem to be as into them anymore (but my research has also transitioned to innate immunity from adaptive, so it's likely that I'm no longer in that universe).
In general, it doesn't surprise me that when you prime the innate immune system, the adaptive immune system works well. The problem is that pathogens have an incredible suite of tools ready to evade these mechanisms. The doses of the pathogens are typically insanely high too, which I do not think model natural infections well. Anyways, this is intriguing, so I'll take a look at the original paper one of these days. Vaccine research generally is so boring. It's like, we vaccinated, and it worked, or didn't, no mechanism.
infinitewars 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, I've had exactly this ever since my first COVID experience. If I come across anyone with even a tiny level of COVID or flu, it sets of inflammation in my lungs within minutes. Haven't gotten sick in six years now but this inflammation has happened probably one hundred times and is indeed quite unpleasant.
ivan_gammel 6 hours ago [-]
Or worse. If it is so easy to activate, there must be an evolutionary reason why we don’t have it.
gcanyon 3 hours ago [-]
I think you have evolution backwards. There only needs to not be a reason we need it to survive long enough to reproduce. Or more probabilistically, there needs to not be a significant reproductive benefit to it.
And bear in mind that most people don't have a problem surviving colds and the like long enough to reproduce even with no vaccines at all, and that was probably more true for much of our evolutionary history when we were living much more isolated lives, and not cohabiting with chickens and pigs.
ivan_gammel 2 hours ago [-]
>There only needs to not be a reason we need it to survive long enough to reproduce.
Humans had life expectancy even shorter than our fertility period until recently and they developed as social species hundreds of thousands years ago, for which living beyond fertility period is beneficial (grandparents were invented by evolution too).
> And bear in mind that most people don't have a problem surviving colds
That’s modern people with access to antibiotics etc.
> that was probably more true for much of our evolutionary history when we were living much more isolated lives, and not cohabiting with chickens and pigs
For much of our evolutionary history people were eating animals, getting viruses with them.
ipaddr 51 minutes ago [-]
If you made it to fertility age your life expectancy was much longer.
tshaddox 3 hours ago [-]
There doesn’t need to be an evolutionary reason why we don’t have something. That’s the default!
ivan_gammel 2 hours ago [-]
If something clearly helps survival and not an improbable thing to develop, the chances are high we would already have it. But we don’t and most species don’t. It is not the default, there likely exists a reason why.
Larrikin 51 minutes ago [-]
What's the reason
MarkusQ 6 hours ago [-]
Systemic cost.
We could have paper shredders, blenders, toasters, water taps, and so on that just ran all the time, but our utility bills would be ginormous. Same thing for our bodies.
lokar 6 hours ago [-]
Or the risk of autoimmune disease?
MarkusQ 2 hours ago [-]
Yep. And probably increased allergies. Possibly decreased fertility. And who knows what else.
ekianjo 3 hours ago [-]
Yes that's the obvious one
Rexxar 5 hours ago [-]
Maybe it would made the immune system age faster if it is "used" too much.
ekianjo 3 hours ago [-]
Inflammation is certainly not "free". It causes systemic damage.
tensor 1 hours ago [-]
So does getting infected over and over. Much worse damage. Evolution isn't some magic thing that gives you the most optimal creature for a given metric. The only metric is procreation. Not longevity. Not a pleasant life.
shiroiuma 1 hours ago [-]
>wouldn't the description of this imply you're stimulating the body to be in an a long-term situation that would be commonly viewed as unpleasant (inflamed, maybe nasal drainage, that type of thing) with the positive tradeoff that you get fewer actual infections?
It might be worth it, at least during certain times of the year. For much of the winter, for instance, I already seem to have a lot of nasal drainage and other unpleasant symptoms for the whole time, along with the occasional actual infection which is much more unpleasant.
There's certain times when there's big flare-ups of infections such as flu, so maybe giving everyone an annoying vaccine during that time which gives them the sniffles would actually improve things overall.
standardUser 3 hours ago [-]
People with severe allergies or at high risk would probably make the tradeoff even if side effects were a problem. If they're not a problem, I could see most people taking this regularly just to avoid the nuisance of respiratory infections.
Horatius77 5 hours ago [-]
Appears that it is trying to stimulate broad immunity .. instead of any one specific virus/disease. Artificial and overstimulation of our immune systems long-term can't be healthy. Definitely a tradeoff here.
gcanyon 3 hours ago [-]
> [greater activity within] our immune systems long-term can't be healthy
Not trying to be flip, but why? "Natural" isn't always better, and as the obesity epidemic has shown, our evolutionary past hasn't done a perfect job of preparing us for our current environment.
You might be right, but I'm skeptical that there is any non-extreme limit to something as simple and mechanical as our innate immune system.
Palomides 3 hours ago [-]
calling the immune system simple and mechanical is completely wild, like half of americans have some kind of medically diagnosable immune dysfunction
gcanyon 2 hours ago [-]
The immune system operates at level far below where we get "tired" -- worrying that we'll "use up" the immune system seems similar to worrying that exercise will "use up" our lifetime allotment of heartbeats.
2 hours ago [-]
adrianN 3 hours ago [-]
We know that systemic inflammation is associated with all kinds of chronic diseases. I don’t know whether we have figured out which causes which, but I’d be wary of overstimulating the immune system too.
SecretDreams 2 hours ago [-]
Normally when your immune system is on high alert for a prolonged period of time, it can lead to more false positives and trigger auto immune issues.
gcanyon 2 hours ago [-]
But this is talking about the innate vs. the adaptive immune system. I am not a medical professional, but it seems like the innate system is either maladapted or not. In any case, I don't think it's fair to assume that your "common sense" overrides my skepticism.
mcdeltat 2 hours ago [-]
There are likely biological pros and cons between innate and adaptive, such that using the innate response for everything is not desirable.
The innate response is less targeted, less effective, and causes potentially damaging effects like inflammation. The adaptive response is more targeted and more effective, with the tradeoff that it needs to be learnt.
curtisf 3 hours ago [-]
It could also be useful in low doses to supplement, for example, a seasonal vaccine in a year where they are especially unsure about prevalent strains, or where their predictions were already proved wrong early in the flu season
butILoveLife 3 hours ago [-]
Cant we say this applies to the flu vaccine? This almost validates why I skip it every year.
I get sick after getting the flu vaccine and feel pretty bad for 1-3 days... then I get the flu anyway because they picked the wrong ones.
gus_massa 3 hours ago [-]
The normal vaccine is very different. The inmune system learns how to block one virus or bacteria and go to rest until the virus or bacteria appears.
This looks like the inmune system is keep at the emergency level for 3 months.
5 hours ago [-]
dionian 4 hours ago [-]
you would think so! as a "vaccine skeptic", i think this kind of research is important and patients should be able to decide w/ their doctor which to pursue based on their individual condition. perhaps this tradeoff will be worth it in higher risk individuals.
The only human disease that has been eradicated is smallpox. What did that get relabeled to?
idontwantthis 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah this is the funniest anti-vax stance I've ever heard. I'm really interested to hear what other diseases we've apparently eradicated without telling anyone.
dennis_jeeves2 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
cryzinger 6 hours ago [-]
Measles and chickenpox aren't even similar pathogens. Chickenpox is more closely related to herpes!
(That's also why chickenpox can come back later in life as shingles, the same way cold sores recur... because shingles is reactivated chickenpox, it's not a "relabeled" virus...)
dennis_jeeves2 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
asacrowflies 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dang 2 hours ago [-]
We've banned this account for egregiously breaking the site guidelines. You can't post like this here, no matter how wrong other users are or you feel they are.
Hmm, you are correct. I misread the article. My point is that cures exist, have existed. They've been hidden or dismissed by the powers that be, e.g. people that have controlled the world, and live even here on HackerNews. But worry not, full disclosure is coming soon, along with the end of most authoritarian regimes ;)
stevenalowe 4 hours ago [-]
Disagree. Prevention of many things via broad immunity seems superior to alleged multiple alleged Cures
SilentM68 2 hours ago [-]
Perhaps, but all I've seen in my lifetime is the management of diseases and conditions. For prevention to work, food production needs to change. Doctors, hospitals, colleges used to be free, medicines used to cure (e.g. polio vaccine), doctors experimented on themselves. What changed? In my view, greed, was added to the equation, in all fields, medicine, education (e.g. teachers teach as a means to retire, doctors don't do research). AI is going to fix that for everyone, in my view :|
A new area of research has opened up. This approach may be more useful for treatment than prevention. It's not really a vaccine; it's more like an induced vaccine response. Keeping the immune system in that state full time might be a problem. But after an infection, that's what's wanted.
I do wonder if the kind of people who got vaccinated 10 times against Covid-19 will end up trying to get a sniff of this every month? Kind of like how we overuse antibiotics in cleaners. It seems like it would be best if saved for an "oh shoot" kind of situation.
I wonder if the vaccine causes inflammatory and other unpleasant responses when administered. If so, I wonder if those responses go away after the last dose, when the three months of protection begin.
Here are the two paragraphs that I found interesting:
> The new vaccine, for now known as GLA-3M-052-LS+OVA, mimics the T cell signals that directly stimulate innate immune cells in the lungs. It also contains a harmless antigen, an egg protein called ovalbumin or OVA, which recruits T cells into the lungs to maintain the innate response for weeks to months.
> In the study, mice were given a drop of the vaccine in their noses. Some recieved multiple doses, given a week apart. Each mouse was then exposed to one type of respiratory virus. With three doses of the vaccine, mice were protected against SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses for at least three months.
Here's hoping the final product doesn't have a side-effect of inducing an allergy to the main component of egg-whites.
Although even if that happened... Would it only apply to the raw materials, as opposed to cooked products where the ovalbumin was denatured by heat?
Edit: No, wait! What about "safe to eat" cookie-dough, which uses heat-treated flour and pasteurized eggs as ingredients!? The might still have intact ovalbumin, and obviously I can't give it up.
That latter term (ectopic lymphoid structure) comes up in connection with persistent inflammation where the immune system sets up camp near the problem point. Is this good or bad? Do these go away once the infection clears up?
In general, it doesn't surprise me that when you prime the innate immune system, the adaptive immune system works well. The problem is that pathogens have an incredible suite of tools ready to evade these mechanisms. The doses of the pathogens are typically insanely high too, which I do not think model natural infections well. Anyways, this is intriguing, so I'll take a look at the original paper one of these days. Vaccine research generally is so boring. It's like, we vaccinated, and it worked, or didn't, no mechanism.
And bear in mind that most people don't have a problem surviving colds and the like long enough to reproduce even with no vaccines at all, and that was probably more true for much of our evolutionary history when we were living much more isolated lives, and not cohabiting with chickens and pigs.
Humans had life expectancy even shorter than our fertility period until recently and they developed as social species hundreds of thousands years ago, for which living beyond fertility period is beneficial (grandparents were invented by evolution too).
> And bear in mind that most people don't have a problem surviving colds
That’s modern people with access to antibiotics etc.
> that was probably more true for much of our evolutionary history when we were living much more isolated lives, and not cohabiting with chickens and pigs
For much of our evolutionary history people were eating animals, getting viruses with them.
We could have paper shredders, blenders, toasters, water taps, and so on that just ran all the time, but our utility bills would be ginormous. Same thing for our bodies.
It might be worth it, at least during certain times of the year. For much of the winter, for instance, I already seem to have a lot of nasal drainage and other unpleasant symptoms for the whole time, along with the occasional actual infection which is much more unpleasant.
There's certain times when there's big flare-ups of infections such as flu, so maybe giving everyone an annoying vaccine during that time which gives them the sniffles would actually improve things overall.
Not trying to be flip, but why? "Natural" isn't always better, and as the obesity epidemic has shown, our evolutionary past hasn't done a perfect job of preparing us for our current environment.
You might be right, but I'm skeptical that there is any non-extreme limit to something as simple and mechanical as our innate immune system.
The innate response is less targeted, less effective, and causes potentially damaging effects like inflammation. The adaptive response is more targeted and more effective, with the tradeoff that it needs to be learnt.
I get sick after getting the flu vaccine and feel pretty bad for 1-3 days... then I get the flu anyway because they picked the wrong ones.
This looks like the inmune system is keep at the emergency level for 3 months.
https://sci-net.xyz/10.1126/science.aea1260
Some discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47080267
(That's also why chickenpox can come back later in life as shingles, the same way cold sores recur... because shingles is reactivated chickenpox, it's not a "relabeled" virus...)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46567569
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46541957
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46540675
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46540551
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46388711
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html