Sick People Make Good Guinea Pigs - An End to Flu?

Unless, of course, Those Who Didn't Pay Attention in School start another anti-vaccination campaign.

Scientists have moved closer to developing a universal flu vaccine after using the 2009 pandemic as a natural experiment to study why some people seem to resist severe illness.

Researchers at Imperial College London asked volunteers to donate blood samples just as the swine flu pandemic was getting underway and report any symptoms they experienced over the next two flu seasons.

They found that those who avoided severe illness had more CD8 T cells, a type of virus-killing immune cell, in their blood at the start of the pandemic.

New strains of flu are continuously emerging, some of which are deadly, and so the goal is to create a universal vaccine that would be effective against all strains of flu.

Today's flu vaccines make the immune system produce antibodies that recognize the surface of the virus. Unfortunately flu viruses evolve new surface structures quickly, so last year's vaccine doesn't work and this year's vaccine is a guess.

CD8 T cells target the core of the virus, which doesn't change, even in new strains.