Flu Shot and the Role of Antibodies (Nursing)

00:00 Fact or fiction? You can get the flu from the flu shot.

00:04 You don't know how many people told me this.

00:06 Oh, I got the flu shot once and then I got the flu.

00:09 So I'm not ever doing it again.

00:12 This is fiction.

00:14 Let me explain why.

00:17 The flu shot is inactivated virus, so you're not able to get the flu from this.

00:23 Now am I saying that the patient didn't have the flu? No, but it takes a couple weeks for your body to develop antibodies, so the patient may have picked up the flu even before they got the flu shot.

00:35 So keep that in mind.

00:38 Now what about is the flu shot 100% effective.

00:43 No, the flu virus is constantly changing into new strains.

00:48 They call it mutating, and we make predictions long before flu season.

00:53 So keep this in mind.

00:54 Yep, you could get the flu shot and then even after your body has antibodies the patient develop the flu so it isn't a hundred percent effective.

01:04 So when people tell you that, that is right, if they said they got the flu vaccine and then later on they got the flu they could be absolutely spot on what can't happen is the flu vaccine did not give the patient the flu.

01:20 So hundred percent effective.

01:21 Let me break it down a little bit for you there.

01:22 It takes 10 to 14 days for antibodies to be created that can fight off influenza.

01:29 So you get the flu shot the vaccine, then it takes your body like a couple weeks before I can develop the antibodies.

01:36 Remember antibodies are going to recognize the flu virus as an invader and take care of it, but it takes a while for your body to do all that programming and get prepared for the flu virus.

01:48 So let's talk about how the yearly vaccine is selected.

01:52 I want you to be educated and be able to make an informed decision.

01:56 We have more than a hundred national influenza centers in over a hundred countries that collect data year-round.

02:03 So this just isn't a guess.

02:05 This is a very highly educated guess based on data.

02:10 Now samples of the virus are sent to five who collaborating centers for reference and research just on influenza.

02:18 So the hundred centers send their samples to these five WHO centers.

02:23 Let me show you where they're located, Atlanta, Georgia, London, Melbourne, Australia, Tokyo Japan, and Beijing China.

02:33 So these five centers are participating in that research and the development of the vaccine.

02:38 Now the World Health Organization often hurt called the WHO, assesses which strains of the flu virus are most likely to be circulating in the northern hemisphere in the following winter.

02:51 Now then they will make a recommendation which flu strains should be included in the vaccine and each country.

02:58 Okay underline that.

02:59 Each country makes the final decision which strains will be included in the licensed flu vaccines in their country.

03:08 Have you ever gone for a flu vaccine? Make sure you always ask some are trivalent meaning three strains of the virus, some are quadrivalent those contain four strains of the flu virus.

03:21 So if I'm getting the flu vaccine, I'm definitely going to get the one with four strains.

03:26 So you got the process, hundred centers collect the data, then they send it to five WHO centers and these multiple countries that analyze the data, the WHO makes a recommendation but each country is on who makes the final determination of what will be their official flu vaccine.

03:45 Now most years one or two strains of type A flu and type B flu circulate.

03:52 The Food and Drug Administration the FDA makes a decision in the United States which strains will be included in our flu vaccine.

04:00 Vaccine production starts in March and it's ready in September, remember it takes 6 months for large quantities to be produced.

04:09 So it takes a while to identify what should go in the vaccine and then to actually produce the vaccine.

04:17 So they start in March for the very next flu season.

04:24 Antibodies are large y-shaped proteins that are produced by the beta cells in the plasma.

04:31 Okay so these are the things that took 10 to 14 days to get ready. Right? We need these because they recognized a bacteria or in this case a virus as an antigen.

04:41 They recognize what an Invader bloodstream and they neutralize the antigen.

04:46 That's what antibodies do but it's not instantaneous.

04:50 Remember I want to keep reinforcing that it takes 10 to 18 days after the vaccine is received for the body to create these antibodies.

04:58 So viruses are hard to kill without harming the host.

05:02 Yeah, because the virus is pushy.

05:05 They get right into your cells.

05:07 They overtake your cells and make your cells start replicating viruses.

05:12 It's different than bacteria.

05:14 They are much easier in most cases for us to kill with antibiotics.

05:19 Vaccines are actually the best way to prevent the flu.

05:22 We I'd rather help your body be prepared before it's exposed to the flu rather than try and fight off the symptoms afterwards.

05:30 So antibodies are a key component of our adaptive immune system.

05:35 Yeah, sounding familiar.

05:37 This is things that my body responds to to help keep me safe.

05:41 That's an amazing property of our immune system of how it can adapt.

05:46 So people who receive the flu vaccine developed antibodies to those particular strains of the flu that are in the vaccine in approximately 10 to 14 days.

05:55 Yep. I've said that a lot because this is the one thing I want to make sure you know, when you're educating patients, when you're talking to your family and friends, know that that vaccine is not going to be workable.

06:07 It's not going to do what you want it to do for two weeks.

06:10 That's why if you're going to get the vaccine, you want to get it fairly early in the season.