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Potential Avian Influenza Vaccine Candidate Emerges
Cojones
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Registered User regular
Here and here.
I'm not sure if this has been posted already seeing as the news is half a week old but it would seem that human trials have yielded a positive result in nine of ten cases by targeting a conserved group amongst all influenza viruses.
If this ever comes to fruition this is going to make for some real groundbreaking stuff.
Acambis goin' get paid.
I'm not sure if this has been posted already seeing as the news is half a week old but it would seem that human trials have yielded a positive result in nine of ten cases by targeting a conserved group amongst all influenza viruses.
If this ever comes to fruition this is going to make for some real groundbreaking stuff.
Acambis goin' get paid.
Cojones on
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They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Imagine that.
The likelihood of a cross-over virus from bird to man is pretty slim.
Yes, it would own us all in the immunal face, but it should never happen.
Aren't there more pressing matters in the field of medicine than this? I mean, yeah, okay, saving the lives of chicken farmers is great, but...
Assuming this thing works like they hope it will, it's a pretty hefty stride towards eliminating flu season, if nothing else.
Dude, I think it's great that there's a viable bird flu vaccine candidate, but let's not over-exaggerate this. Targeting M2 (the viral ion channel) is a cool idea, but it doesn't stop ALL kinds of influenza, only Type A. Type B isn't a huge concern - I don't believe there's ever been a Type B outbreak of any big size - but it also doesn't prevent Type C (which includes swine flu), which sometimes causes small epidemics.
And having a vaccine against a relatively slow-mutating negative-sense RNA virus that infects epithelial cells (flu) doesn't really get us anywhere toward having a vaccine against a fast-mutating retrovirus that infects immune cells (HIV). Unfortunately.
P.S. AIDS is not a viral disease. HIV is.
But it only affects people that come in direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected birds. It can't spread from person-to-person, only bird-to-bird and bird-to-human, so unless you regularly handle birds or the waste of birds, you're not at much risk of getting it.
The threat of bird flu isn't that the world's knowledge of chicken husbandry might disappear, but that in the far east where you still commonly have wet markets (where the birds are sold live rather than pre-packaged) there is a plenty of oppertunity for it to cross species. Whilst the threat is probably higher in china just due to sheer numbers, its places like Hong Kong and Singapore that are the real issue since there is so much movement in and out of the country.
Plus coming in contact with bird feces isn't as hard as you might think, its not like you have to roll about in the stuff. Soon as migratory birds, parks and children get involved its a lot trickier to contain.
Besides, far as I remember the biggest thing about this discover is that it provides long term immunity, so there isn't the need to get those at risk reinnoculated every year - and combined with programmes like the those aimed at uni students you are well on the way to eradicating the disease.
It's probably going to be the world's next pandemic, so getting some kind of effective vaccine is prudent. The conditions in which these birds are handled are not very hygenic, and cases of cock fighting and other such sports only increase risk of transmission. Considering that risk of transmission risk is high, the carrier population is extremely widespread, and the virus is highly mutagenic its only a matter of time until we get a species that is airborne.
The reason people are shitting their pants about it is because we are pretty much screwed if this happens, we 'are not prepared'! Our only defense before this vaccine was two types of shitty antiviral drugs which were already becoming useless due to viral resistance.
Some of the sentiments are alarmist, but considering that the 1918 flu killed 50-100 million people compared to AIDS 25+ million people, I think its called for. (I understand circumstances were different in 1918... still)
What? No. What do you know about the H5N1 strain? The strain is extremely prone to mutation, and it's so wide spread in certain areas that the transition to spreading through an aerosol/touch vector between humans isn't a question of whether it will, it's a question of when.
This is the best introduction to the disease I can think of off the top of my head.
On the black screen