H1N1 Vaccine Tests Underway

August 14th, 2009 | Category: Feature, In the News | 2 comments

: Image by alvi2047 via Flickr

There has been a lot of rumor and gossip about H1N1 vaccine’s that are going to be used without testing – but the rumors are just that. In fact human trials are just starting for vaccines with four different companies testing vaccines. The tests and approvals have been fast tracked in order to get as much vaccine ready for the northern hemisphere flu season as possible.

Interestingly, Glaxo is testing vaccines with an adjuvant – an additive designed to increase effectiveness and improves the body’s response to the vaccine. Adjuvants have not been used in past flu vaccines and tests are underway for vaccine both with and without adjuvant.

Glaxo also says that it has orders for over 290 million doses and plans to donate 50 million doses to the WHO. There isn’t any information on what the other companies orders are like, but in addition, the US is known to have ordered $250 million of vaccine ingredients.

One of the more fortunate aspects of the H1N1 outbreak so far is that the ongoing spread through Spring and Summer has given a wide spread of people the opportunity to develop some natural immunity. But since flu viruses are particularly likely to mutate, it is not yet known how much immunity a previous exposure will provide.

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January 4, 2010 at 8:07 pm · Reply

If you look at the pandemic of 1977, when H1N1 or Swine Flu re-emerged after a 20 year absence, there is no shift in age-related mortality pattern. The 1977 “pandemic” is, of course, not considered a true pandemic by experts today, for reasons that are not entierely consistent. It certainly was an antigenic shift and not an antigenic drift. As far as I have been able to follow the current events, the most significant factor seems to have been that most people, who were severely affected, were people with other medical conditions.