Friday, March 25, 2005
Cracking Killer Flu
Scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland have started recruiting 450 volunteers to test the safety of a new vaccine against the lethal bird flu brewing in Asia.
The flu emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 and has spread among poultry populations in Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere in Asia. So far it has infected 69 people who had come in contact with sick animals, and killed 46 of them, a chilling 67% mortality rate.
Health officials around the world have been sounding alarms, saying that the flu virus, labeled H5N1, could spark global influenza pandemic like the one in 1918, which killed 50 million people. Doctors in the U.S. says that even a relatively mild strain would kill over 200,000 Americans.
The drug maker Sanofi Pasteur made the new trial vaccine using an inactivated H5N1 virus isolated in Southeast Asia in 2004. The company didn't release any other production details.
The NIAID trial will test the vaccine's safety and ability to generate an immune response in 450 healthy adults aged 18 to 64. If the vaccine is shown to be safe in adults, there are plans to test it in other populations, such as the elderly and children.
Separately, Scientist at the British National Institute for Biological Standards and Control have also managed to build a vaccine against the H5N1. The NIBSC is due to present its report on the vaccine at the U.K.'s Society for General Microbiology on April 6.
The flu emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 and has spread among poultry populations in Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere in Asia. So far it has infected 69 people who had come in contact with sick animals, and killed 46 of them, a chilling 67% mortality rate.
Health officials around the world have been sounding alarms, saying that the flu virus, labeled H5N1, could spark global influenza pandemic like the one in 1918, which killed 50 million people. Doctors in the U.S. says that even a relatively mild strain would kill over 200,000 Americans.
The drug maker Sanofi Pasteur made the new trial vaccine using an inactivated H5N1 virus isolated in Southeast Asia in 2004. The company didn't release any other production details.
The NIAID trial will test the vaccine's safety and ability to generate an immune response in 450 healthy adults aged 18 to 64. If the vaccine is shown to be safe in adults, there are plans to test it in other populations, such as the elderly and children.
Separately, Scientist at the British National Institute for Biological Standards and Control have also managed to build a vaccine against the H5N1. The NIBSC is due to present its report on the vaccine at the U.K.'s Society for General Microbiology on April 6.
