A movement toward individualized vaccines

X chromosomes kick your immune system into gear. The colder season seems to be synonymous with vaccine season, year after year; as we layer up for winter, recommendations for flu shots seem to pop up everywhere. Despite this apparent correlation, vaccines are not, in fact, seasonal – they are offered year-round for a plethora of diseases. In order to stay as healthy as possible, it is important to understand vaccines, and it is not as simple as you may think: the effects of vaccines vary based on the assigned sex of each respective recipient. A vaccine is a biological substance that either closely resembles a pathogen or is a weakened, attenuated form of a microbe. This substance is introduced to the body, traditionally with a needle, leading to an attack on the vaccine by the immune system. The reason this works is because memory B cells in the immune system keep a...