Anti-vax: the history of a scientific problem

Immunological landscape of human lymphoid explants during measles virus infection

In humans, lymph nodes are the primary site of measles virus (MeV) replication. To understand the immunological events that occur at this site, we infected human lymphoid tissue explants using a pathogenic strain of MeV that expresses GFP. We found that MeV infected 5%-15% of cells across donors. Using single-cell RNA-Seq and flow cytometry, we found that while most of the 29 cell populations identified in the lymphoid culture were susceptible to MeV, there was a broad preferential infection of B cells and reduced infection of T cells. Further subsetting of T cells revealed that this reduction may be driven by the decreased infection of naive T cells. Transcriptional changes in infected B cells were dominated by an interferon-stimulated gene (ISG) signature. To determine which of these ISGs were most substantial, we evaluated the proteome of MeV-infected Raji cells by mass spectrometry. We found that IFIT1, IFIT2, IFIT3, ISG15, CXCL10, MX2, and XAF1 proteins were the most highly induced and positively correlated with their expression in the transcriptome. These data provide insight into the immunological events that occur in lymph nodes during infection and may lead to the development of therapeutic interventions.

Investigating Beliefs in Anti-Vax Conspiracy Theories among Medical Students

While the doctors' role in immunization is essential, their lack of knowledge or vaccine hesitancy may affect their ability to communicate effectively and educate patients about vaccination, vaccine hesitancy, and vaccine conspiracy theories. This, in turn, may hinder health policy aimed at fighting infectious diseases. Vaccine hesitancy is prevalent not only among the general population but also among healthcare workers; thus, this study is aimed at assessing future doctors' attitudes towards anti-vax conspiracy theories. A total of 441 medical students at Poznan University of Medical Sciences completed a web-based survey designed to explore their attitudes toward the six most prevalent anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. The survey showed that although over 97% of future doctors support vaccinations as an effective form of fighting infectious diseases, and 80% did not believe in any anti-vax conspiracy theory, a significant fraction of 20% of medical students either believed in at least one such theory or were unsure. It has also shown that male and younger students who had not received a flu vaccination and defined themselves as politically right-wing or conservative and religious were more likely to believe in anti-vax conspiracy theories. Our data suggest that, in order to overcome medical students' ambivalent attitudes towards anti-vax conspiracy theories, they should receive more education about the importance of vaccination in preventing disease and about effective ways to combat vaccine hesitancy and anti-vax conspiracy theories.