Vaccines

I got my first dose of the Astra Zeneca vaccine yesterday. There was a steward to let me in to the health centre, another to guide me to my seat and tell me when it was my turn for the pre-assessment, another to greet me to the area where I was to wait for the jab itself and finally, one to check me out. As it turned out, the whole operation was so slick that I didn't have time to sit down in the second waiting area. I checked my watch as I left and it was only five minutes past the time of my appointment. I was hugely impressed and grateful once again to our National Health Service who this week learned that they would receive a paltry 1% pay rise after a year of unprecedented stress. The justification that the economy is under extreme strain might be understandable if our government hadn't squandered billions by handing contracts to third parties with no history of healthcare to procure personal protective equipment (PPE) for NHS staff that had to be discarded when it was found to be inadequate and a track and trace system that never came close to meeting its goals.

The nurse who gave me the jab reassured me that, although I might feel some flu-like symptoms, it wasn't a live vaccine so those symptoms would just be my immune system working hard against what it perceives as a threat. Sure enough, I have been feeling a bit grotty since then but a couple of Paramacetamol has done the trick for me. It is interesting to consider that many of the symptoms that we experience when we become infected with a virus are actually produced by our bodies devoting some of our energy to producing the machinery to nullify the intruding virus' RNA. As I started to feel the effects in the evening, I imagined a conversation between my immune system and the vaccine along the lines of James Bond meeting his nemesis Blofeld.

So, we meet at last Covid.

I've been expecting you.

Covid even sounds like a Bond villain. In this analogy my side effects are the results of the ensuing fight although I'm not sure how paracetamol fits in. And of course, i'm not meeting the actual Covid-19. Perhaps my analogy is the real victim here being tortured like this while Bond makes his get away.

Vaccinations can also be effective against other diseases including Parkinson's Disease. The onset of PD seems to be linked with the development of Lewy bodies within the brain. Lewy bodies are clumps of accumulated α-synuclein protein which also play a role in other brain disorders. α-synuclein inhibits DNA repair in cells. In the case of PD, Lewy bodies cluster around neurons so that eventually those neurons stop producing the hormone Dopamine which our brains use to send messages around our bodies. It is possible to develop vaccines of antibodies that prevent and break up these α-synuclein clusters. Indeed some of these are undergoing medical trials. Antibodies were in the headlines before Christmas when then President Trump used experimental antibodies as part of a cocktail of medicine to treat his Covid-19 infection. Although there have been promising results, those results have not, so far, met the rigorous testing requirements set at the trials' outset.

It is possible that the vaccine produced very positive results in some cases similar to what viewers of BBC Two's programme The Parkinson’s Drug Trial: A Miracle Cure? witnessed. However frustrating though, the trials are designed to achieve better understanding of the drug being studied with our safety in mind so patience is needed. There have been a rash of comments on this blog over the past fortnight claiming to have found a miracle cure for PD in herbal medicine. Perhaps it is true but the herbal remedies need to be subject to the same level of testing as pharmaceuticals before they can be confidently adopted.

The first Astra Zeneca jab has given me new optimism about the future. Who knows, maybe the intense search for Covid-19 vaccines over the last year could indirectly lead to a PD vaccine too.