Annotated Bibliography

Chan, L Amanda. “The Life Cycle of the Flu (INFOGRAPHIC)”. Huffpost Healthy Living. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.

Chan describes the life cycle of a flu virus that gets into your body. She starts with the first 24-48 hours. The flu virus gets inside the body through your respiratory tract. Then the virus starts to make its way into the cells lining the respiratory tract and begin to multiply. She also explains the symptoms that a typical person with the flu has. She makes her way through the life cycle ending with the last few days. She notes that if the flu virus is completely gone, the inflammation will decrease. Her explanation about the life cycle of the flu virus seems to very accurate and credible. Chan makes her point very clear and concise.

“CDC Says “Take 3” Actions to Fight the Flu”. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web. 17 Aug. 2015.

The primary goal of this article was to talk about prevention. The people of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), compose three basic actions we should take to help prevent the flu. The three basic actions are: Take time to get a flu vaccine, Take everyday preventive actions to stop the spreading of germs, and Take flu antiviral drugs if your doctor prescribes them. They go into detail about how and what exactly you should do during these steps. The CDC has a very good reputation and has very credible sources. This article will be very important for the closing of my blog post.

Brian Alexander. NBC News. “Testosterone may make Men more likely to get the Flu”. Web. 23 Dec. 2013.

Alexander’s article discusses how men with higher levels of testosterone may be more likely to get the flu than men with lower levels and women. He discusses how the high testosterone levels cause the men to have weak, or even no response to the flu vaccine. He talks about a study that a multinational team from Stanford, France, and the University of North Carolina conducted where they took blood from 54 women and 37 men of different ages, then studied a variety of immune system proteins and cells using complex systems to detect gene expression. They then gave flu vaccines to these people and checked for any changes in these parameters. The study found that men as a group, had a more muted response to the vaccine. To sum it up, Alexander states that basically men have weaker immune systems due to genetics and gene expression.

Jennie Dusheck. Stanford Medicine. “Women’s Immune System genes operate differently from Men’s”. Web. 29 Jul. 2015.

In this article, Dusheck talks about how immune system genes switch on and off differently in women and men. She informs the readers on how there is a new technology that can reveal the immune system genes that switch on and off that vary between men and women. One discovery that she mentions is that the genes that switch on and off differently from person to person are more likely to be associated with autoimmune diseases. In the article, Dusheck includes a study where researchers took blood samples from 12 volunteers to measure how certain genes are turned on and off from person to person. In the study, they found that 20 out of the 30 genes showed significant differential activity between men and women. This article helps readers get a better understanding of why women’s immune systems are stronger than men’s and why it’s harder for men to fight off flu viruses than women.

News Medical Life Sciences of Medicine. “Estrogen Helps Women fight flu viruses better than Men”. John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Web. 20 Jan. 2016.

In this article, Sabra L Klein discusses how the female hormone Estrogen can help fight off flu viruses in women but not in men. It suggests an advantage to the female hormone that naturally is found in women’s bodies, as well as artificial forms given for hormone replacement therapy and estrogen-like chemicals found in the environment. Recent studies have proven that estrogen can decrease the replication of viruses including HIV, Ebola, and Hepatitis. This can lessen the infection’s severity and make it less likely to spread to other people. Klein and her colleagues conducted research to see how infected nasal cells from males and females respond to different types of estrogen. Klein’s research seems to have been very influential and has been reported in several articles. With this research she has shown another potential benefit from using the hormone estrogen.