Biomarker For Flu Susceptibility

I've never had a flu jab my entire life (I'm 56), and don't feel that I've ever gotten the flu. Of course it's difficult to know for sure with M.E because I feel viral-like 80% of the time.
Perhaps I get a milder form when exposed but not sure.

Researchers at Stanford have discovered a way to predict who when exposed to the flu virus will become ill.

“We found that a type of immune cell called a natural killer cell was consistently low at baseline in individuals who got infected,” Bongen said. Those who had a higher proportion of natural killer cells had better immune defenses and fought off illness".

“So we asked, ‘What are the genes that represent natural killer cells?’ And there turned out to be this one gene, KLRD1, that seemed to be a good target,” Bongen said".

 

Interesting, might this contribute to understanding the apparant phenomenon that a large percentage of people with ME find a flu inoculation triggers an ME crash and another large percentage find it has no negative effect for them?

 

You don't necessarily have a fever with the flu, though. And after getting ME I don't seem to get a fever even when it feels like I should have had one.

 

Perhaps it depends on how you define a fever. Pre-ME, my average baseline temp hovered around 98.6. Now it is closer to 97 on any given day. If I register a 98.6 tomorrow, wouldn't that conform with the idea of a fever? For me, at least, 97 is the new normal temp. But most likely not one of my doctors believes that.

Maybe, but was that baseline a true baseline? A large part of this computational analysis appears to be retrospective data.

Regardless, what insurance companies, or state proxies, could do with this sort of insight might be a cause for concern in and of itself.

 

Another concern is that it becomes another lab doctors use to mock and dismiss us; healthy people have that result, too.

I do question the definition of “healthy” in such a case. I suspect it doesn’t mean “has no bothersome symptoms and can do everything expected” so much as “doesn’t have any particular diagnosis thought to be important.”

 

NK cells are said to typically have low function in pwME. Mine do. However it’s not specific to us, and doctors and laboratories tend to be unfamiliar with the test. It doesn’t have a specific CPT code, even.

https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Natural_killer_cell

Although there have been some studies that didn’t find this result, Dr. Klimas has explained that flow cytometry (the laboratory technique used to perform this test) had been an evolving technique, improving in accuracy.

But as the new studies are still finding it, doesn’t seem to be an issue of inaccurate positives for us.

Like any ME study, there might be an issue with sloppy diagnostic criteria in some of the studies, too.

Edit: corrected for accuracy. (Brain did a thing. Can’t talk/write correctly sometimes)

 

The studies don't find that they are low but that their activity is reduced. There's still a normal number of NK cells.

 

Yes, thanks for the assist.

I will fix my post.

 

How colds and chronic disease affect DNA expression from Stanford