Bird Flu Update: Whole-Virus H5N1 Vaccine Tested Successfully
For those of you tracking the bird flu, here’s some excellent news.
Forwarded from my physician.
Whole-Virus H5N1 Vaccine Tested Successfully
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."