STOCKHOLM, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Researchers at the Swedish Karolinska Institutet (KI) and their U.S. colleagues have found a new tool that can show differences in human immune systems, according to a press release from KI on Tuesday.
According to the release, researchers have developed a way to measure the unique composition of white blood cells in individuals. The test may predict how individuals will respond to a given treatment, such as how they respond to an influenza vaccine.
Immune system function varies significantly between individuals, and up to now there has been no effective means of measuring and describing these differences. Now, KI researchers have shown that white blood cell composition in people is unique, and that the composition of these cells may predict the immune system's response to various forms of stimulation. The study paves the way for more individualised treatment of diseases involving the immune system, like allergies and various forms of cancer.
"By measuring all populations of white blood cells in the blood at the same time, we can describe the composition of an individual's immune system and show that this is unique for the individual. We call this measure the individual's 'immunotype'. We have also found that this immunotype makes the complex immune system more understandable and predictable," said Petter Brodin, physician and researcher at the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) and the Department of Medicine, Solna, at KI.
A human immunotype is not constant, but varies over time in response to external factors. In previous studies, Brodin and his colleagues have shown that in humans, individual differences in immune defense can be attributed primarily to the many different environmental factors unique to each individual, such as diet, infections, vaccines and microflora.
In the current study, researchers analysed blood samples from approximately 1,500 healthy individuals and tested in vitro how their white blood cells responded to different stimuli. They have also vaccinated individuals against influenza and studied which antibody protection the individuals developed thereafter. What happened was that all the different types of stimulation could be predicted based on the individual's immunotype, which was surprising, according to Brodin.
"Our technique can be scaled up, and my hope is that eventually it will be used clinically to predict those individuals who may benefit from a particular immunological treatment or a certain vaccine. The technique may also contribute to more individualised drugs to treat autoimmune disease and allergies, as well as immunotherapy to treat cancer, which can be adapted based on the individual's immune response," said Brodin.
The study, conducted by researchers at KI and the SciLifeLab, together with their colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University in the United States, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
KI is one of the world's leading medical universities.
