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Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

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Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#31

Post by vanderZwan »

IIIIIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #27
vanderZwan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was your literal first comment, it could be some form of SPAM or trolling protection

It was the 2nd comment, and since it's not been very long since the first one I remember that I edited it quite extensively, many times, for well over five minutes. This time I could start editing but could not (successfully) submit the edited text just two minutes after posting the comment, according to the time printed just above my comment after I submitted the edit (which only showed the text before the edit, and…

Then I don't know. You normally have around one hour to edit, IIRC.

Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#32

Post by sova »

stretchwithme wrote: post #29
paviva wrote: post #17

Very good question and a very good answers in this article! I'll add one more reason not explored by the authors: antibodies don't "leak" in the environment, in contrast to the antibiotics which are everywhere. For example, if I'm vaccinated against S. pneumoniae (one of the bacteria that can cause pneumonia), the bacteria have to get inside my body to gain exposure to my vaccine-induced antibodies. This makes the em…

Antibodies stay in the body.

...and drugs are periodically flushed

Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#33

Post by Fomite »

clarents wrote: post #9
dnautics wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flu, polio, and measles are rna viruses which are regularly vaccinated against.

Wow, you're right, I guess that kind of kills my theory. I knew that flu was which explained why there's a new vaccine every year and it's often not effective against the current strain. But I had thought that polio and measles were DNA viruses.

You are partially right. Some RNA viruses are hard to vaccinate against because of their mutation rate, but it's not the sole arbiter of whether or not it's doable.

There are other issues, like the existence (and lack thereof) of highly conserved antigenic targets.

Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#34

Post by robbiep »

IIIIIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #21
pishpash wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't excrete antibodies? I think you might be saying that antibiotics are passive strategies which are inherently overly broad and thus problematic.

Antibodies are too large to pass through the filter in the kidneys. Lower molecular weight fragments of antibodies are usually reabsorbed in the proximal tubule of the nephron. Their fate mostly lies in catabolism, i.e. they are broken down and the components reused. Biliary excretion accounts for a very small amount of the elimination of IgG antibodies. [0] "Pharmacokinetics of Monoclonal Antibodies" http://onlineli…

Even if an antibody was eliminated, and managed to bind to an antigen, what good is it if it doesn’t have a complementary immune system to act on it

Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#35

Post by Fomite »

dnautics wrote: post #5

The decreasing effectiveness of the flu vaccine suggests to me that the flu metagenome is evolving resistance to our vaccine generation strategy.

There is not a decreasing trend in the efficacy of the flu vaccine over time.

Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#36

Post by refurb »

I always figured it was because there were thousands of different types of antibodies generated against an immunological challenge (e.g. vaccine).

The antibody simply finds a conserved binding site and it works. Therefore, they don't have to be the same.

As a result, resistance doesn't form as the bacteria or virus would need to develop resistance to thousands of different antibodies, not just one.

Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#37

Post by richardw »

rflrob wrote: post #19
philjohn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, each year we have to guess which strains will be prevalent, and sometimes they get it wrong.

Not only that, the strains they choose not to include will likely spread more effectively than the ones that they do. So even if the vaccine magically protected 100% of people against the most prevalent N strains, the (N+1)th strain will be the one that most people get. Did the CDC “guess wrong”, or are they doing their best to fight an impossible battle?

Is developing or producing the vaccine the costly bit?

If producing, then what about creating more and patchworking them? It might reduce the monoculture type issue.

I.e. everyone gets the worst two, then two of the next 8/16, whatever models best.

I assume this has already been modelled to death but asking in case anyone knows.

Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#38

Post by mirimir »

refurb wrote: post #36

I always figured it was because there were thousands of different types of antibodies generated against an immunological challenge (e.g. vaccine). The antibody simply finds a conserved binding site and it works. Therefore, they don't have to be the same. As a result, resistance doesn't form as the bacteria or virus would need to develop resistance to thousands of different antibodies, not just one.

This was my guess, before reading the article.

A couple secondary hypotheses come to mind. First, resistance to monoclonal antibody based drugs[0] is more likely than resistance to vaccines. Second, resistance to single-epitope vaccines is more likely than resistance to complex multi-epitope vaccines.

0) https://www.medicinenet.com/monoclonal_antibodies/article.ht...

Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#39

Post by IIIIIIIIIIIIIII »

robbiep wrote: post #34
IIIIIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antibodies are too large to pass through the filter in the kidneys. Lower molecular weight fragments of antibodies are usually reabsorbed in the proximal tubule of the nephron. Their fate mostly lies in catabolism, i.e. they are broken down and the components reused. Biliary excretion accounts for a very small amount of the elimination of IgG antibodies. [0] "Pharmacokinetics of Monoclonal Antibodies" http://onlineli…

Even if an antibody was eliminated, and managed to bind to an antigen, what good is it if it doesn’t have a complementary immune system to act on it

Yes, that's actually the main point, thanks!

I missed it when I wrote my reply, concentrating on the immediate question (interesting psychological problem) - and then I could not edit it. It bothered me quite a bit but I did not want to write a third reply. Interesting to see how easy it is to get sidetracked on an irrelevant (albeit interesting) question, and how hard it is to get the discussion back on track.

Re: Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

#40

Post by dnautics »

Fomite wrote: post #35
dnautics wrote: post #5

The decreasing effectiveness of the flu vaccine suggests to me that the flu metagenome is evolving resistance to our vaccine generation strategy.

There is not a decreasing trend in the efficacy of the flu vaccine over time.

There is if you add in nonseasonal flu.
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