News Health & Medicine

Immune cells show long-term memory

Almost a century after exposure to the 1918 Spanish flu, survivors’ white blood cells still recognize the virus

By Tina Hesman Saey

- More than 2 years ago

Even after 90 years, the immune system doesn’t forget the face of a mass-murderer. A new study shows that survivors of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic still have immune cells that remember the culprit virus.

Such long-lived immunity was thought to be impossible without periodic exposure to the microbe that stimulated the immune system in the first place.