Submitted by AskScienceModerator t3_yxofvc in askscience
FluFighterDrJB t1_iwrc9ys wrote
Reply to comment by Letspostsomething in AskScience AMA Series: We're Experts on Influenza (aka the Flu). AUA! by AskScienceModerator
>Letspostsomething · 9 min. ago
>
>Why don’t we just create a shot with with all the H’s and N’s in it rather than creating different shots each year?
There are many different types of universal vaccine approaches under development; many of them target conserved parts of the virus (in other words, part of the virus that stay the same for long periods of time, and are consistent between different HA and NA subtypes). Many of these approaches are reviewed here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6028071/ By targeting parts of the virus that do not change (unlike the current inactivated influenza vaccines, which target parts of the virus that do a good job stimulating immune responses but are more likely to change from year to year), universal vaccines hope to have broader efficacy against different virus subtypes.
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