Bird Flu Vaccine | Bird Flu Virus

Bird Flu Vaccine Developments

Many large drug companies are working to develop a human vaccine for the bird flu virus. In May 2006, GlaxoSmith-Kline announced that new human trials are being carried out in Germany and Belgium, and other testing of a bird flu vaccine has begun using workers in the poultry industry in Russia.

It is hoped that this bird flu vaccine would provide some protection before a pandemic begins, then, if a pandemic did occur, the vaccine would be modified to match the pandemic virus more closely.

Bird Flu Vaccine may take 10 Years to Develop

At the First International Conference on Avian Influenza in Humans in Paris, some of the world's leading virologists told the conference that it may take 10 years to develop a bird flu vaccine for humans.

Dr. David Fedson, a retired professor of medicine from the University of Virginia, said that the H5N1 virus was proving very difficult to grow and that the vaccines that had been developed so far were not effective.

The problem with trying to develop a bird flu vaccine to combat a particular strain of the bird flu virus is that flu viruses mutate rapidly, which means that they permanently change their characteristics often. This makes it difficult to develop a vaccine for a particular virus until a pandemic is well underway.

How does a bird flu vaccine work?

As many people as possible would be immunized with a specific bird flu vaccine that stimulates the production of antibodies to that virus. Then, if an immunized person comes in contact with the bird flu virus, these antibodies would attack and destroy the virus before it could replicate.

Will the current influenza vaccine protect me?

The influenza vaccine available today will only protect you against the current influenza virus. There is no bird flu vaccine available commercially that will protect you against the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus that is killing people at the moment.

However, observational studies indicate that repeated influenza vaccinations appear to raise the body's ability to ward off many flu viruses that are not covered by a particular vaccine.

People who have had repeated flu vaccinations have less bouts of the flu and the death rates are lower than those who have been vaccinated against the flu only once. So repeated use of a bird flu vaccine might give some protection against a mutation of the H5N1 virus.

Will a bird flu vaccine provide real protection?

Since it takes at least 4 to 6 months to produce a vaccine, a bird flu vaccine would only be useful if the outbreak could be contained for several months, while a vaccine for a particular virus is developed and made widely available.

There are also production difficulties. The world's population is about 6.5 billion, but only about 100 million people could be immunized with six month's production of vaccine (about 1 person in 6,500).

A bird flu vaccine could be used to treat people before a second wave of infection swept though an area. For that to be successful, however, the virus would have to continue to replicate in its present form, which is highly unlikely over time.