Open AccessSome unanswered questions about vaccination
Author(s) -
Brown Fred
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
fems microbiology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.899
H-Index - 151
eISSN - 1574-6968
pISSN - 0378-1097
DOI - 10.1111/j.1574-6968.1992.tb14079.x
Subject(s) - antigenic variation , measles , vaccination , variation (astronomy) , epistemology , immunology , psychology , original antigenic sin , antigen , medicine , antigenic drift , philosophy , hemagglutinin (influenza) , physics , astrophysics
I pondered for several months over what I should write for this 100th Volume of FEMS Microbiology Letters before deciding that it might be useful to pose some questions about vaccination for which there seem to be no adequate answers. Although I have put these questions verbally to colleagues over several years, I thought that by putting the same questions in writing, it would not only help to clarify my own thoughts, but it might even bring some answers. To avoid accusations that I may have become too philosophical and impractical, I have also focussed on one of these problems, namely antigenic variation, which I think could be overcome within the foreseeable future as we learn more about the structure of epitopes which evoke protective immune responses. The questions that intrigue me are: (1) Why do we only get measles once, but are constantly getting colds or influenza? Antigenic variation is the usual answer to the second part of the question. But the question I am asking is why there is antigenic variation with some agents but not with others.