Name: Is a Universal Flu Shot Possible?
Uploaded: 2021-05-23T15:50:21.000Z
Duration: 11 min 41 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

a vaccine is an almost guaranteed lifeline.

All of these viruses in the population haven't changed

In contrast, influenza changes every year.

estimates that influenza infects 1 billion of us every year;

because they don't fight every strain of flu.

So scientists around the world are searching for a shot

that fights different strains of the virus

including some that might not even exist yet.

because you know that you're working for something good

This breakthrough will give us lasting protection

against influenza, but it might also help us understand

Hippocrates first described influenza in 412 BC.

Since then, the virus has caused annual epidemics.

that killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people worldwide

there was a lot of movement from rural areas into cities.

So at the time we didn't even know it was a virus.

Viruses were kinda still being figured out at the time.

that we knew the cause of the 1918 pandemic

and then subsequently the seasonal epidemics

that they realized that was actually due to a virus.

it wasn't really until the late 1940s and 1950s

that actual vaccines were being used more regularly.

Even though there are just three basic types of flu,

A, B and C; type A which is the most dangerous for humans,

has a surface covered in two main proteins, H and N.

There are 18 different types of H protein

And they combine to create up to 198 influenza subtypes

The influenza virus is constantly changing.

on the inside of the virus are the genes,

the instructions for making more copies of itself.

those viruses that are in those respiratory droplets

they grab on to the respiratory cells that are there.

and then release those genes that are in there.

Those genes, it's not one long string of instructions,

it's eight separate strings of instruction.

And so there's so much opportunity for that virus to mess up

It really doesn't have good quality control.

beause it makes copies of itself that may not even live on,

and ways to get around vaccines that are being used.

And means that our body can't always recognize the virus,

even if we've caught it or been vaccinated before.

But scientists at pharmaceutical company BiondVax,

have worked for almost three decades creating a vaccine

which targets parts of the virus that don't change.

All influenza virus are different in their appearance

but they are still considered as influenza

And what the immune system wants to do it,

they want to recognize the virus and to attack it

So what we thought will be more effective

is to show the immune system and teach it

to recognize the conserved and common denominator

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Is a Universal Flu Shot Possible?

significant

immune

recognize

pandemic