November 16, 2010
I received the following question via email:I got my genomics testing done. But the company that did my testing doesn’t have any information about genomics and infections or vaccines. Are variations in vaccine effectiveness influenced at all by personal genomic variations? If so, what genes or SNPs are involved? Yes. An effective immune response to vaccination is governed by a complex interaction of multiple genes that regulate cytokine proteins (part of our body’s inflammation process). Gene variations in the TNFA, TNFRSF1B, IL12B, and OAS1 genes have recently been found to modulate the ‘immunogenicity’ that vaccines have, which in turn relates to how well, if at all, our immune system’s B-cells and T-cells mount a response to the organisms the vaccines are directed against.
Read full story