Vaccination Response in Individual Monozygotic Twins

Study Summary

Respiratory viruses are known to be risk factors for asthma (e.g respiratory syncytial viruses, RSVs, and Human Rhinoviruses, HRVs, may induce bronchiolitis, and wheezing illnesses respectively). The common flu is also known to be a risk factor and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that asthmatics receive the annual flu vaccine, as a high-risk group for related asthma exacerbations. The investigators will be evaluating the variation in individual responses over time after controlled immune activation following influenza vaccination of monozygotic twins, both discordant for asthma, and concordant non-asthmatic. The transition from initial healthy to immune-system activated physiological states post vaccination will provide unprecedented molecular (omics) data on the molecular dynamics of immune response to vaccination, and novel insight into the flu response. The investigators will infer novel networks and pathways and as well as the dynamics of genes and mechanisms involved in asthma, flu vaccination, and individual responses, and correlate them to evaluated personalized genetic risks in the same study. The investigators will be able to also contrast the vaccination response in asthmatic and non-asthmatic individuals, in a longitudinal approach which has never been performed before using multiple-omics that included an immunization response.

Primary Outcome

The study will construct RNA-expression, protein profiles and small molecule profiles on immune cells as these change over time prior to and following immune activation by the vaccine. The collective temporal patterns will be used to classify immune response

Interventions

• BIOLOGICAL Influenza Vaccination