Question

2. A patient is resisting the idea of getting the annual flu vaccine, claiming to have already had the flu shot “sometime in the past couple decades”.

a. Explain why it is important to receive an annual flu shot. What is the flu shot comprised of? Define and use the term “antigenic drift”.

b. Continuing from above, what is “antigenic shift” and why and how can this occur in influenza viruses? How does this differ from antigenic drift, and why is it of particular concern from a public health perspective?

3. Define/describe viruses. Discuss the arguments for and against classifying viruses as life.

Answer 1

Anwer:

a. Flu shot is a type vaccine. in this, deactivated / killed cells injected into the body to develop the immunity. hence our immune system will develop antibodies against to the organism, so if the organisms in live condition enters into the body, our immune system will immediately terminate the antigen.

Antigenic drift: it is known as mutations within the genes that code for antibody-binding sites. This results in a new strain of virus particles which cannot be inhibited as effectively by the antibodies that were originally targeted against previous strains. hence to prevent the antigenic drift, vaccination shall be adminstrated as "booster dosage".

b. Antigenic shift is known as two or more different strains of a virus, or strains of two or more different viruses, combine to form a new subtype having a mixture of the surface antigens of the two or more original strains.

it is different from antigenic drift because here the same organism is get mutated in antigenic drift and in the antigenic shift, two different organisms combined to form a new organism.

antigenis shift is a serious condition for public health, because the evolution of new organism leads to develop new diseases which can not stopped until the new drrug development.

3. Viruses: viruses are infective agents which consists of nucleic acid molecule in protein coat.