Individuals receiving the annual vaccine for regular seasonal flu strains also develop protection against the more dangerous bird flu strain known as H7N9 that emerged in China 2 years ago, medical scientists in Chicago and New York have found.

Share on Pinterest The seasonal flu vaccine may protect against bird flu.

The researchers, from the University of Chicago Medicine and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, found antibodies – the immune system’s protective proteins – for H7N9 in people who had had the injection for seasonal flu. They have published their findings online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Bird or avian flu virus emerged in China in 2013 and, as the researchers point out, shows a high death rate among people who become infected – H7N9 has killed a third of hospitalized patients.

While no pandemic has yet been seen, the threat of wider global spread is a worrying one, so the scientists – led by co-senior author Patrick Wilson, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago – looked to the regular seasonal vaccine, which produces antibodies against the flu virus, proteins that bind to the invading pathogen and neutralize it.

Dr. Wilson concludes that protection could be developed from the annual injection against H7N9:

“We have clear evidence that a normal immune response to flu vaccination offers protection against dangerous and highly unique strains of influenza such as H7N9. We now need to develop ways of amplifying this response.”

The researchers isolated antibodies from 28 people vaccinated with the regular seasonal injection: