By Steven Reinberg WEDNESDAY, March 13 (HealthDay News) -- Flu
vaccines protect people by activating white blood cells that, in
turn, boost the development of antibodies to the flu, a new
study suggests. The finding may lead to more effective vaccines
-- especially for people whose immune system isn't robust enough
to fully protect them from the flu, such as the elderly, the
study authors said. "It is well known that CD4 T cells are
important for the generation of antibody responses," said lead
researcher Dr. Hideki Ueno, an investigator at the Baylor
Institute for Immunology Research in Dallas. "Most importantly,
we found that the appearance of these cells in blood correlated
with the development of protective antibodies against flu.
Therefore, these cells appear to be very important for the
successful flu vaccination," he said. The failure of older
people to generate a protective antibody response after a flu
vaccine might be associated with the failure to produce these
CD4 T cells, Ueno said. This year, fo