New Bird Flu Vaccine Safer & More Effective
Celvapan, the new age medicine of bird flu has promised to work better- thus claim the researchers of the product. The drug prepared by the Baxter is expected to succeed in developing a whole-virus bird flu vaccine that appears to be safe, more effective than the other. Also, the study confirms the feasibility of using new, cell culture-derived vaccine.
The volunteers of the study produced antibodies against the virus after receiving a second dose of the vaccine. Dr. Pascal James Imperato, dean of the graduate program in public health at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in New York City and a former New York city health commissioner said, “The fact that they were able to do this, and very efficiently, and get such good antibody response reinforces and reconfirms that, even for the annual flu virus, we need to move away from embryonated hens’ eggs“.
It can be added that for the past 50 years, vaccines have been made using a cumbersome egg-based technology, which requires weakened virus injected into hundreds of millions of fertilized hens’ eggs each year. The process takes about six months to be completed and has to be repeated as virus strains change.
Researchers were also able to use a whole virus, thought to produce better immunity responses, without any major side effects.
“We had been concerned with the idea that whole viruses have more side effects, but this doesn’t show that“.
Celvapan was tested on 275 adults aged 18 to 45. All of them received two doses 21 days apart. The vaccine produced an immune response against the A/Vietnam/1203/2004 virus strain. Also it works against two related strains. However researchers say that the Celvapan is not an accepted yet vaccine as it is yet to be applied on the children.
Source: US NEWS & WORLD REPORT
