Posted by Hugh on November 2, 2020, at 11:35:14
In reply to Re: Medicines/Supplement that might help 4 coronavirus, posted by Hugh on July 15, 2020, at 13:52:07
U.S. health officials are urging Americans to get their flu shots this year in the hopes of thwarting a winter "twindemic" -- a situation in which both influenza and COVID-19 spread and sicken the public. But a new study suggests that there could be another key reason to get a flu jab this year: it might reduce your risk of COVID-19. The research, released as a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, indicates that a flu vaccine against the influenza virus may also trigger the body to produce broad infection-fighting molecules that combat the pandemic-causing coronavirus.
And in a preprint paper released in July, researchers at the Mayo Clinic and the biomedical computing company nference found that adults who had received vaccines for flu, polio, chicken pox, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), hepatitis A or B, or pneumococcal disease over the past five years were less likely to test positive for the novel coronavirus than people who had not received any of them.
Now nearly two dozen clinical trials around the world are underway to determine whether the bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine against tuberculosis could protect against COVID-19. (Netea is helping to run one of them.) BCG has been linked to a reduced risk of infections and of overall child mortality even when tuberculosis is not spreading in a particular region. In Netea's new study, he and his team exposed a subset of immune cells to the BCG vaccine before the flu vaccine. They found that exposure to both vaccines increased cytokine production even more than the flu vaccine alone. Netea says that he plans to design additional studies to tease out the flu vaccine's effects on COVID-19 risk, including among older adults.
Complete article:
poster:Hugh
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URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20201025/msgs/1112421.html