Researchers from the United Kingdom are one step closer to producing a vaccine that would protect against all strains of seasonal flu and limit future pandemics.

The team of scientists at Imperial College of London published the results of their work in Nature Medicine, according to a report in Medical News Today.

Typically flu vaccines instigate the body’s immune system to produce antibodies that recognize proteins on the surface of the virus, so the system can attack the virus when it spots the proteins. However, the proteins are always changing, leaving vaccine developers one step behind the curve each year.

Recently scientists have conducted research on animals that show a vaccine targeting the more stable core of the virus, rather than the surface, caused the animals’ immune system to make antibodies attacking those more stable virus parts, the report says.

This latest study is the first to use a real human pandemic--the 2009 swine flu pandemic--to learn whether the immune system could recognize and protect against new strains for which people lack antibodies, the report says.

Researchers tracked 342 volunteers through the following two flu seasons, the report says. Scientists found those volunteers who caught the flu but had mild or no symptoms had more CD8 T cells, a type of immune cell that kills viruses. Those who got sicker had fewer of these cells.

The researchers then concluded that a vaccine the encourages the immune system to produce more CD8 T cells could protect against severe disease from all flu viruses, the report says.

According to the World Health Organization, flu epidemics make between 3 and 5 million people severely sick and kill up to 500,000 people each year.

For more on efforts to improve outcome measures reportable on Home Health Compare related to flu vaccinations, turn to Home Health Line.