Successful Bird Flu vaccine!

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Not.

Needs two doses 90 mcgs each, which is 12 times the amount in a flu shot.

two shots = 24 times the dose for flu shot.

Just over half the participants get antibodies...


and they say they are heading in the right direction.

http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/heal...out531823.html

More than half (54 percent) of participants who received the highest dose of vaccine (two shots of 90 micrograms each) had levels of antibodies considered protective against the virus.

The proportion of people who were protected decreased with smaller doses: only 43 percent of people who received two 45-microgram shots were protected, 22 percent of people receiving two 15-microgram shots and 9 percent of people receiving two 7.5-microgram shots. Some participants reported mild pain at the injection site.

An accompanying editorial called the response "poor to moderate at best."

And the study authors acknowledged that they don't know how much protection these individuals really have. "We won't know until people become exposed to the virus," Treanor said.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

All for a pandemic that isn't imminent:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/sc...gewanted=print

for a disease it appears won't ever go human to human:

http://www.washtimes.com/functions/p...2-111957-5097r

Two medical research teams have discovered why the bird flu is not spreading easily from person to person: The virus attaches itself too far down in the human respiratory tract to spread via coughs and sneezes, the usual way influenza spreads.
The findings were reported yesterday in the journal Nature by a group led by virologist Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Similar results by Dutch researchers also were published yesterday in the online journal ScienceXpress, Sciencexpress.org.
This helps explain why all people who have been stricken with the bird-flu virus, H5N1, became sick after directly handling infected poultry, rather than by having contact with infected people. The studies suggest that it will not be as easy as some had thought for H5N1 to mutate for efficient human-to-human transmission.
"Deep in the respiratory system, [cell] receptors for avian viruses, including avian H5N1 viruses, are present," Dr. Kawaoka said. "But these receptors are rare in the upper portion of the respiratory system. For the viruses to be transmitted efficiently, they have to multiply in the upper portion of the respiratory system so that they can be transmitted by coughing and sneezing."

Never mind this little gem:

Hazards in the hunt for flu bug
By Gina Kolata

The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2005

From near the end of the article...

"Some experts like Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York said the H5N1 viruses are a false alarm. He notes that studies of serum collected in 1992 from people in rural China indicated that millions there had antibodies to the H5N1 strain. That means they had been infected with an H5N1 bird virus and recovered, apparently without incident."

[DaryLLL]

me:



drug co's:

[Chi-Chi Mama]

I almost fell off my chair when I saw the title.
thanks a lot, Hilary

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

That's why I chose the title. Shock value, you know....

[boobear]

Good one

I'd love to see this "in lights" downtown NYC:

"Some experts like Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York said the H5N1 viruses are a false alarm. He notes that studies of serum collected in 1992 from people in rural China indicated that millions there had antibodies to the H5N1 strain. That means they had been infected with an H5N1 bird virus and recovered, apparently without incident."

Scary thought is, what's next?!

[LongIsland]

Originally Posted by boobear

"Some experts like Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York said the H5N1 viruses are a false alarm. He notes that studies of serum collected in 1992 from people in rural China indicated that millions there had antibodies to the H5N1 strain. That means they had been infected with an H5N1 bird virus and recovered, apparently without incident."

Full text of Associated Press article:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories

Immunity to N1 part of the H5N1 bird flu virus????

Of course, H5N1 has already killed some people, but even that gives no real indication of how deadly it is for humans. These few deaths have no context. There may be many less severely ill people going unnoticed.

The way to tell the real death rate is by taking blood samples from a large population to see how many have antibodies to the virus, indicating they had been infected. These serosurveys, as they are called, are standard operating procedure when a new germ appears. They were among the first things done when West Nile virus and SARS emerged. Yet they have not been done in a big way among poultry workers in Asia - the most likely people exposed to bird flu.

"I'm frankly a bit bamboozled by all that. I can't understand why that hasn't been done extensively," Schaffner said.

Without serosurvey information, the apparent human death rate for H5N1 infection of about 50 percent may be erroneous, said Craig Pringle, a viral diseases moderator for ProMed-mail, a blog operated by the International Society for Infectious Diseases. He's also a retired professor at the University of Warwick in England.

In any case, Kilbourne said the makeup of H5N1 itself might dampen its impact. The "N1" part of the virus refers to the classification of a certain protein on its surface. Another kind of N1 human flu virus has been widely circulating since 1977, so it's recognizable to the immune systems of many people.

When the "N" part of the flu virus didn't change between the pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the latter was a milder killer, Kilbourne noted.

So as for the current bird flu, "I am less concerned about all this business than others because I think the N1 immunity that everyone in this population has now ... may well mitigate the effects," he said.

[mamakay]

Originally Posted by Momtezuma Tuatara

That's why I chose the title. Shock value, you know....

It worked.

[LongIsland]

Originally Posted by Momtezuma Tuatara

Not.
Needs two doses 90 mcgs each, which is 12 times the amount in a flu shot.

This is from an article that came out today regarding two GSK avian vaccines to ultimately be licensed in Europe:


However, Glaxo acknowledged that its vaccines were being tested at lower doses than a U.S. vaccine that showed only modest effects in early testing.

Glaxo said its test shots - taken in pairs over a period of months - each contain a range of just under 4 micrograms to 30 micrograms of antigen.

Results of the first human testing in the United States of an H5N1 vaccine, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that it took two shots of 90 micrograms of antigen each to spur a protective immune response in slightly over half of recipients.

Ripley Ballou, vice president of clinical R&D at Glaxo, said the company remained confident about its chosen range and that "one of the two antigens would be successful in eliciting superior immune responses."

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Where did the article below come from LI? Your URL takes me to a map I can't make head nor tail of.

Originally Posted by LongIsland

Full text of Associated Press article:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories

Immunity to N1 part of the H5N1 bird flu virus????

Of course, H5N1 has already killed some people, but even that gives no real indication of how deadly it is for humans. These few deaths have no context. There may be many less severely ill people going unnoticed.

The way to tell the real death rate is by taking blood samples from a large population to see how many have antibodies to the virus, indicating they had been infected. These serosurveys, as they are called, are standard operating procedure when a new germ appears. They were among the first things done when West Nile virus and SARS emerged. Yet they have not been done in a big way among poultry workers in Asia - the most likely people exposed to bird flu.

"I'm frankly a bit bamboozled by all that. I can't understand why that hasn't been done extensively," Schaffner said.

Without serosurvey information, the apparent human death rate for H5N1 infection of about 50 percent may be erroneous, said Craig Pringle, a viral diseases moderator for ProMed-mail, a blog operated by the International Society for Infectious Diseases. He's also a retired professor at the University of Warwick in England.

In any case, Kilbourne said the makeup of H5N1 itself might dampen its impact. The "N1" part of the virus refers to the classification of a certain protein on its surface. Another kind of N1 human flu virus has been widely circulating since 1977, so it's recognizable to the immune systems of many people.

When the "N" part of the flu virus didn't change between the pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the latter was a milder killer, Kilbourne noted.

So as for the current bird flu, "I am less concerned about all this business than others because I think the N1 immunity that everyone in this population has now ... may well mitigate the effects," he said.

[LongIsland]

Originally Posted by Momtezuma Tuatara

Where did the article below come from LI? Your URL takes me to a map I can't make head nor tail of.

It's an Associated Press article, so it's found in almost all American newspapers because they pick it up off the AP wires. There are so many - I'm not sure which publication you'd prefer - it could be the NY Times or the Beantown Gazette.

If you Google "Past Yields Few Clues for Predicting Flu," the article will come up and you can choose. Interesting reading.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Ta.