![]() ![]() In the past decade, large differences have occasionally appeared in the antigenic distances inferred from ferret compared to human sera. In the past few years, escape from human sera has been considered too (e.g., ).Īn open question is whether more direct and representative estimates of population immunity could lead to better vaccine choices while potentially shedding light on the mechanisms of coevolution between the viral population and host immunity. These experimental measures of immune escape, alongside other estimates of variant growth rates and sequence-based fitness models, are used to anticipate the dominant clade and need for vaccine updates. ![]() The extent to which these sera cross-react or neutralize candidate strains is taken as a measure of their immune escape or antigenic distance. As surrogates for the human population, influenza-naive ferrets are infected or vaccinated with one of a set of reference influenza strains (e.g., current vaccine strains), and their post-exposure sera are tested against candidate strains for the next vaccine. Twice each year, representative strains from circulating clades are evaluated for their ability to escape antibodies to current vaccine strains, under the expectation that these clades might come to dominate and could be poorly matched by the current vaccine. This understanding has long shaped vaccination strategies against influenza. The epidemiological and evolutionary dynamics of antigenically variable pathogens are intrinsically sensitive to immunity in the host population. ![]()
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