Some experts said it was an intriguing finding that shows a patient's response to a virus may determine how sick they will become.
"The bug in someone who gets severely ill is not any different than the one that infects someone who has mild illness," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who did not participate in the study. "It's the host that does all the damage to themselves."
If people carried the genetic variant, Osterholm said, their immune systems were more likely to kick into overdrive if they caught the flu, causing problems like organ damage or blocking their airways. Scientists have long recognized that diseases don't strike all populations equally. Caucasian people are more likely to get the crippling Guillain-Barre syndrome after vaccinations and flu epidemics are often more fatal in indigenous populations in Australia and Canada.
So people are differentially susceptible and caucasians are at a higher risk for autoimmune complications, and yet we ALL are told to get a flu shot. I wonder whose idea that was...
