Improving the effectiveness of vaccines by enhancing positive mood

Vaccinations are commonly used within health care to protect against infectious diseases such as influenza. However, vaccine efficacy is poor within populations who have compromised immune systems, such as older people. In recent work, positive mood on the day of vaccination has been associated with an enhanced antibody response to influenza vaccination in older people. My focus for this project will be to develop an individualised positive mood intervention, which will be delivered on a digital platform as part of a randomised control trial to participants directly before vaccination. Our primary aim is to enhance positive mood with the use of this intervention, and our secondary aim is to measure antibody specific immune responses at baseline (before) and after (at 4 and 16 weeks) to give us an indication of vaccine effectiveness. Leading on from this, the project research will then be directed towards determining the immunological mechanisms by which positive mood enhances the immune system and consequently effectiveness of the influenza vaccine in older people.