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Vaccination is one of the most important tools for preventing infectious diseases and protecting public health. However, immune responses after vaccination vary dramatically from person to person: If you give many people the exact same vaccine, some will experience side effects such as fever and flulike symptoms while others feel fine.

The risk of side effects like fever can make people hesitant to be vaccinated, potentially reducing vaccination rates and increasing the risk of preventable illness and death. Fever reflects an inflammatory immune response; currently, however, it isn't clear why only some people experience fever after vaccines.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen, Georgia State University, Institut Pasteur in Paris, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm), the University of Manitoba, the University of California San Diego and the Institute for Tropical Medicine at the University of Tübingen have now shown that one source of the variation in immune response may be the gut microbiome.

The trillions of microorganisms inhabiting the human intestine differ between individuals and continually interact with the immune system. By interacting with our immune systems, these microorganisms help establish a person's immune state even before vaccination.

To understand the role of the microbiome during vaccination, a team of researchers led by Ruth Ley in the Department of Microbiome Science at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen established the µHEAT (Microbial-Human Ecology and Temperature) study.

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