Infection vs Immunity

A New Way to Predict Infection’s Toll

[No Caption]
Scientists have developed new ways to forecast who will bounce back from disease by studying not just the way the immune system fights infections, but how the
quantamagazine.org

The same bug infects different people.  Most bounce back, some languish, while a few perish.  What makes the difference?  Can we predict and target more aggressive treatment to those who may need it more?

Biologics Seem to Protect Against Sepsis in RA

Sepsis risk spikes with discontinuation of biologics
medpagetoday.com
It sounds almost paradoxical: current immunosuppressive treatment with biologics (most commonly an anti-TNF agent) increases the risk of severe infections, but seems to protect against the worst life-threatening complications in sepsis, like shock, multi-organ failure and death.
While being on a biologic understandably increases susceptibility to infection, it may attenuate a dysregulated and unbridled immune response to the infection, which could otherwise result in a cytokine storm, called the Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS). Survival is touch and go in this situation. This is the main mechanism of mortality: it’s the immune system, not the infection, that kills. We are indeed our worse enemy.
Treating severe sepsis should perhaps be a close collaboration between ID physicians and immunologists.

Contrary dengue vaccine response hints at possible problems with Zika

It’s called antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), wherein the dengue vaccine sets up severe disease in those not previously exposed — and it might have…
cidrap.umn.edu

Can vaccines kill?
No, I’m not fear-mongering about excipients in some older vaccines possibly causing autism (which has been roundly debunked), or even the newly described but rare ASIA (Autoinflammatory/Autoimmunity Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants).
It’s about ADE (Antibody-Dependent Enhancement), whereby flaviviruses (Dengue, Zika, Yellow Fever) latch onto cross-reacting antibodies produced against a different flavivirus strain to gain entry into Antigen-Presenting Cells. From there on, the viruses replicate unrestrained, while the immune response goes nuclear.
As such, a Zika or a Dengue vaccine can potentially set a population up for a far more catastrophic epidemic when a different flavivirus strain comes along in future.