Research on avian flu vaccine takes priority

Scientists have not been idle. A recently concluded trial indicates that a pandemic flu vaccine could be effective.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Nov. 28, 2005.

Washington -- It's very good news that there is a vaccine that seems to offer protection from the deadly H5N1 virus that is infecting people in Asia and being carried westward, apparently by migrating birds.

However, whether the vaccine will be effective against a strain of the virus that can be easily passed from person to person is the great unknown that has kept researchers hard at work. Another big unknown: how to produce a vaccine fast enough and in sufficient quantities to protect everyone.

The Dept. of Health and Human Services estimates that as many as 1.9 million deaths could occur in the United States alone in the first 12 to 24 months of a lethal bird flu outbreak.

Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, has been involved with several of the most frightening public health battles of the past 30 years -- think HIV/AIDS, SARS and antibiotic resistance. But he was always able to sleep at night. "Now I lie awake thinking about pandemic flu," he said during a news briefing last month on global health risks. "We can't ignore the giant dinosaur in our kitchen."

Researchers who are on the trail of an effective pandemic flu vaccine, as well as faster methods to develop and manufacture one, aren't ignoring that dinosaur, but are circling it warily.

Promising results have emerged from a trial sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases regarding an H5N1 flu vaccine under investigation.