SYDNEY, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- Australian researchers have found if the immune system is mounting a systemic response throughout the entire body, its ability to deal with localized infections will be hampered.
Lead researcher, University of Melbourne Professor and laboratory head at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity Scott Mueller told Xinhua Wednesday the findings could also affect the effectiveness of vaccines in people experiencing a systemic infection like a chronic disease or an acute inflammation.
By using mice models, researchers from the institute uncovered how the immune system balances local and systemic immune responses and the relevant paper was published in Cell Reports recently.
The team found when the two responses occur at the same time, white blood cells are diverted from the local lymph glands to participate in systemic immune response, impairing the response to local infection.
They also found the body's defense proteins interferons were one of the main signals in the process.
"Interestingly, the killer T-cell response, the cells that kill virus-infected cells, was fine. But it was the antibody response that was mostly suppressed," Mueller said.
The researchers thought this study would also help evaluate the vaccination effect on certain groups of people who are suffering from a systemic response like a chronic disease or an acute inflammation, because most vaccines are given locally such as in the arm to trigger an immune response, creating antibodies to protect people against future infection.
"Our study examined vaccination of animals undergoing an acute co-infection. Our findings show that systemic inflammation caused by infection can impact the effectiveness of local vaccination," Mueller told Xinhua.
"This might also be relevant for chronic inflammatory reactions such as chronic infections or autoimmune diseases like lupus."
However, he said future work would be needed to directly determine the impact of different inflammatory diseases on the outcomes of vaccination. Enditem
