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Understanding the duration of the immune response is very important both for the design of new vaccines and for the development of immunization strategies. Recent research has shown that the half-life of the antibody response to some antigens exceeds 50 years (JW Infect Dis Nov 7 2007). Now, investigators have used recombinant hemagglutinin (HA) that has been produced based on the sequence of the 1918 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus to study the residual immune response of pandemic survivors.
The investigators identified 32 individuals, aged 91 to 101, many of whom recalled illness in the household during the 1918 pandemic. All were found to have serum-neutralizing activity against the 1918 H1N1 virus; 94% showed serologic reactivity to the 19…