Whole-Virus H5N1 Vaccine Tested Successfully
posted in - Jimbo, - Medical Updates |While we were busy making teh-tarik in space, the people down South came up with this:
A vaccine against the avian influenza virus has been successfully tested for safety and immunogenicity, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study.
In a combined phase 1 and 2 study designed and conducted largely by the manufacturer, nearly 300 volunteers in Singapore and Austria received various doses of the whole-virus vaccine. The vaccine was immunogenic both against the primary strain of H5N1 used in the vaccine as well as against two other strains of H5N1 tested.
Pain at the injection site and headache were the two most common adverse reactions.
In Journal Watch Infectious Diseases, Larry M. Baddour says the study “heralds two major accomplishments. One is the potential availability of a safe and immunogenic vaccine against a much-feared pathogen [and the other is] the use of cell culture, which is preferable to embryonated eggs for virus production in vaccine development.”
You can access the NEJM article here: A Clinical Trial of a Whole-Virus H5N1 Vaccine Derived from Cell Culture
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June 13th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Unfortunately, the next influenza epidemic coming from the birds may not be H5N1 but H7 as there is evidence Some avian flu H7 viruses growing more human-like
June 13th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Yeah, I read about that recently. Sigh…
Well, sure it’s better than what our space program has produced ~ a minor celebrity with no scientific output.