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VACCINES

Antibiotics can impede flu vaccines

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 19, page 663 (2019)Cite this article

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Perturbations in the gut microbiota have been shown to affect various immune components and impair the efficacy of treatments such as cancer immunotherapy. Now, work from the group of Bali Pulendran shows that antibiotic-mediated disruption of the gut microbiota can impair the effectiveness of seasonal influenza vaccination in individuals with low levels of pre-existing immunity.

In this initial study, the authors did not see any differences between the TIV-induced antibody responses of antibiotic-treated and control individuals. However, many individuals showed high baseline antibody titres; therefore, in a subsequent study the authors enrolled additional subjects with low pre-existing titres of antibody against influenza. In this follow-up study using individuals with limited pre-existing immunity, antibiotic treatment markedly impaired binding and neutralization antibody responses against the H1N1 A/California strain of influenza (although not against the other two strains targeted by the vaccine) following TIV vaccination. Specifically, the antibiotic-treated subjects showed markedly impaired production of IgG1 and IgA1 specific for H1N1 A/California following vaccination.

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References

Original article

  • Hagan, T. et al. Antibiotics-driven gut microbiome perturbation alters immunity to vaccines in humans. Cell 178, 1313–1328 (2019)

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  1. Nature Reviews Immunology http://www.nature.com/nri/

    Yvonne Bordon

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  1. Yvonne Bordon
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Correspondence to Yvonne Bordon.

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Bordon, Y. Antibiotics can impede flu vaccines. Nat Rev Immunol 19, 663 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-019-0227-3

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