For example, the African trypanosome parasites are able to clear the host's antibodies, as well as resist lysis and inhibit parts of the innate immune response.
[3] A bacterium, Bordetella pertussis, is able to escape the immune response by inhibiting neutrophils and macrophages from invading the infection site early on.
[citation needed] Antigenic escape is not only crucial for the host's natural immune response, but also for the resistance against vaccinations.
[6] The most common of antigenic escape mechanisms, homologous recombination, can be seen in a wide variety of bacterial pathogens, including Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that infects the human stomach.
Through the recombination of H. pylori's outer membrane proteins, immunoglobulins can no longer recognize these new structures and, therefore, cannot attack the antigen as part of the normal immune response.
Through the conversion of ATP to cAMP by the enzyme adenylate cyclase, the production of TNF-α, a signaling cytokine important for inducing inflammation, is inhibited in liver myeloid cells.
In recent research of Neisseria meningitidis, the possibility of such broad coverage may be achieved through the combination of multi-component polysaccharide conjugate vaccines.
However, in order to further improve upon broadening the scope of vaccinations, epidemiological surveillance must be conducted to better detect the variation of escape mutants and their spread.