Browsing: human immune system

The hepatitis B vaccine is one of the most potent immunizations, usually providing decades of protection against the deadly liver virus. But in about 10% of people it doesn’t work, and in 2020, Amy Huei-Yi Lee, a systems biologist at Simon Fraser University, and her colleagues set out to determine whether they could predict who would benefit. The scientists found that data on recipients’ immune systems such as the abundance of certain proteins and the activity patterns of a few genes foretold whether they would generate defenses against the virus. “We got a sense of what factors drive the vaccine response and what [doesn’t],” Lee says.

A study has suggested that the antimicrobial used to promote livestock growth breeds bacteria more resistant to the human immune system, scientists have warned.