According to Science Daily online there has been a lot of research activity last March at Duke University in the United States with the intention of developing a vaccine for the bird flu. The point of what is known as “the Dukes study” has always been to measure the different strengths of vaccines.
The Duke study has been going on for seven months in collaborating with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. Also participating in the study are the University of Maryland, the University of Rochester and Baylor College of Medicine.
Scientists are adding a compound called an adjuvant to the vaccine which is basically a component that strengthens an immune response to smaller doses of the vaccine. The idea is that if the smaller dose stimulates immunity against the virus, then more people could be immunized with existing supplies if a worldwide epidemic of the bird flu takes place.
The Duke bird flu vaccine is designed to protect against the H5N1 strain of bird flu that has infected poultry in Asia, Europe and Africa and killed over one hundred people so far. Initial trials in healthy adults showed the vaccine was safe and that it did produce an immune response. However researchers consider the vaccine to be too weak as the immune response is mild. It requires high does and at least two inoculations to be effective.
Like the ordinary flu vaccines given yearly in the U.S., the H5N1 vaccine causes the body’s immune system to make antibodies to fight infection. In previous studies with this vaccine, two doses were necessary to stimulate antibodies. The doses needed to trigger antibodies were also much higher than necessary for other types of flu so attempts to produce that stronger vaccine are the point of a study currently being done on 150 people.