Flu vaccine effectiveness depends on your genes

A “big data” genetic analysis has found 9 genes that influence how your body reacts to the influenza vaccine, writes Andrew Masterson. An analysis of influenza vaccine response in more than 500 people has identified nine genes that influence the effectiveness of the treatment. The research – which involved computational interrogation of 32,034 genes – confirms the findings of smaller studies, and helps to explain why the effectiveness of the flu vax tends to decrease in older people. In a study published in the journal Science Immunology, scientists working under the banner of the Human Immunology Project Consortium (HIPC) at Yale University in the US say using big datasets to map the success of vaccinations “points to the prospect of predicting antibody responses before vaccination and provides insights into the biological mechanisms underlying successful vaccination responses”. To make their findings the researchers used six of the HIPC’s vaccination cohorts, distributed across geographic locations and...