Einherjar

It would help if you knew the particular strain of virus. However, I wouldn't worry my mind with it.

Never heard of any relationship between vaccines and cancer, not even statistical. About the veterinary adjuvant issue, I don't know, but it may be possible, I would like to know more, but that is probably a compromise in animals for prevention of a bigger problem. In human vaccines the scene is another, there is much more regulation and I don't think that would even be accepted. I don't even want to discuss stupid conspiracy theories, reptilian mind schemes, autism vaccine and so on :rolleyes: Ah, and never heard of vaccines using epitopes which double as growth factors or cell cycle promoters :-S, I also think that those would never be included "in the shot"

Hi! This is my first post: Histamine released from mast cells, among other things is a key player in allergy... and also in normal and necessary physiological processes, so removing all your mast cells is completely absurd. IgE class antibodies produced by B lymphocytes sensitized for the allergen binds to mast cells, and makes them degranulate when the allergen binds to the antibody (stopping this high affinity useless IgE from being produced should be more usefull in the same logic, but hey, don't go all about removing B and Th cells XD). So, leave mast cells alone!! About the Hygiene Hypothesis: Yes, it seems that dirt, squalor, mud and parasitic infections are protective against allergy (noticed how I said this, in the strict epidemiologic sense, because so far it is an observation, the causal mechanisms haven't been worked out), however balance is required. Don't throw your kind into the dirt for the sake of allergen tollerance, but don't lock him into a bubble either (unless he has some type of immunodeficiency loool, nevermind). But I must disagree with this sentence, particularly in the way it was written: "Yeah. Gradual exposure to any type of bug the body can fight, is a good idea -- just steer clear of prions [which cause mad-cow] and HIV." As you know, we have Immunological memory, and that memory too has a size, just as your hard-drive (immune senescence, a complex and poorly understood phenomenon (like regular ageing, in fact this is part of ageing) which reduces the effectiveness of vaccines and the adaptation immune response, among other things. Every infection you fight, leaves it's mark on memory, on the existing "repertoire" of lymphocyte clones and etc... That's why we use vaccines, but the point is to create memory for those which can pose a real threat. Ah, and don't forget, many infections are associated to incidence of some auto-immune diseases, and seem to be responsible for the break in tolerance to self-antigens (see molecular mimicry, among other things)! Just a final note... Someone wrote that "I think the current thought on this idea is that there's a limited time frame (probably up to infancy years) when the immune system actively develops tolerance to both self antigens (so we don't become allergic to our own cells) and nonself antigens (eg. potential allergens)." The first half of the sentence is completely wrong! Tolerance can be divided in Central and Peripheral Tolerance. Central tolerance, refers to the elimination or inactivation of lymphocytes in their development process, and is happening everyday (see the role of Thymus and development of T cells). Everyday you create lymphocytes, so if this time interval was restricted to infancy, auto-immune diseases would be much more common. Peripheral tolerance is, like the name implies, related to mechanisms who mantain tolerance outside the sites of development of lymphocytes (see Treg cells, Tolerogenic Dendritic Cells, among others). So, tolerance to allergens is related to peripheral tolerance (I'm assuming everyone knows how T-cell and B-cell development occurs). So, I kind of agree with the second part, exposure to allergen in childhood appears to favour tolerance to allergens. But remember, Allergy and auto-immunity are different situations!!