Flu season

We might be one major step closer toward ending the scourge of the seasonal flu. This week, the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced the start of a phase I clinical trial testing out a potential universal flu vaccine. The safety and immune response of the experimental shotwill be compared to a typical annual flu vaccine.Won’t Virtual Reality Make Me Sick?The candidate was developed by researchers at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) Vaccine Research Center. It’s a mRNA-based…

Photo: ShutterstockNew research appears to provide a clearer picture of why cold and flu cases are more common during the winter. The study found evidence that our nose’s innate immune response weakens in colder temperatures, providing some germs a better opportunity to infect the rest of the body. The findings, the authors say, could provide a biological explanation for the seasonality of many respiratory diseases.The study comes from scientists at Northeastern University as well as Mass Eye and Ear, a teaching hospital…

After flu hit historically low levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be poised for a comeback. The main clue: A nasty flu season just ended in Australia. While there’s no way to predict if the U.S. will be as hard-hit, “last year we were going into flu season not knowing if flu was around or not. This year we know flu is back," said influenza specialist Richard Webby of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Annual flu shots are…

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)The race to one of medicine’s elusive goals—auniversal flu vaccine—is heating up. On Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health announced the phase I clinical trial of one such potential candidate, which will involve up to 100 adult volunteers. In early experiments, the vaccine appeared to protect animals exposed to fatal doses of multiple influenza strains.The vaccine candidate is known as BPL-1357 and is being developed by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious…