Health Highlights: April 18, 2008

whl1011 · 发表于 2008-4-19 21:30:33

Bird Flu Vaccine Shows Promise
U.S. researchers say they're developing a new bird flu vaccine that could be longer-lasting, provide broader protection, and be easier to produce than existing vaccines.

Currently, the only vaccine approved by U.S. health officials requires a very high dose, is only effective in about 60 percent of people who receive it, and doesn't protect against new strains of the H5N1 bird flu virus, Agence France-Presse reported.

The new vaccine, which uses a mutated version of a common cold virus to deliver genes from two types of the H5N1 virus, protected mice from bird flu infection for more than a year and was broad enough to protect against some mutations of the virus. The findings were published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. The vaccine hasn't been tested in humans.

"We want to have a vaccine that can be stored in advance and have the potential to provide protection for a period of time until we can change the vaccine to match the latest form of avian influenza," said study author Suresh Mittal of Purdue University, AFP reported. "The combination of flu genes that we've used to produce the vaccine, I think, will provide that capability."

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