The Immunology of Influenza

Anti-influenza immunity is a complicated phenomenon: its components include respiratory tract and blood serum antibodies, and specific sensitized lymphocytes. In protecting the organism immunity factors pronouncedly cooperate with each other as well as with factors of nonspecific resistance, such as interferon, macrophages and natural killer cells. Apart from preventing infection and the development of disease, immunity mechanisms are also involved in the organism’s recovery, the prevention of virus transmission from infected to healthy people, and in selecting drift variants of influenza virus A. The variability of antigen specificity of surface glycoproteins, means that anti-influenza immunity acts, first of all, against definite virus strains and sub-types. The existence of species-specific, “universal” immunity as well, opens up prospects for developing fundamentally new methods of influenza prophylaxis.