login
Become a member
Quick Registration
Full Registration Benefits -
Free Homepages for Doctors
Free Homepages for Hospitals
Free Homepages for Medical Conference
Free Homepages for NGO's
Personal Health Record Creation
Access to all Medical Slides
Access to all Jobs & Products Sale
Immune Molecule That Attacks Wide Range of Flu Viruses Identified
The team's findings were published in the February 26, 2009, issue of Science Express, an advance, online publication of selected research papers from the prestigious journal Science.
"This is very exciting because it marks the first step toward the Holy Grail of influenza vaccinology the development of a durable and cross-protective universal influenza virus vaccine," says the study's senior investigator, Ian Wilson, D.Phil., a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and a member of The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at Scripps Research. "Such a flu vaccine could be given to a person just once and act as a universal protectant for most subtypes of influenza, even against pandemic viruses."
Flu vaccines now offer protection only for the specific strains of influenza that public health officials believe to be currently circulating in the population. This involves a lot of guesswork about which strains will be most prevalent and, because the virus is constantly mutating, this guesswork must be repeated year after year.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in the United States more than 200,000 people are typically hospitalized from flu complications every year, and about 36,000 people die from the illness. But that is in a normal year. Over the past century, three major human influenza pandemics (the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919, the Asian Flu of 1957-1958, and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968-1969) have devastated the human population, killing around 50-100 million people worldwide.
|
|
|
 Comment & Contribute
|
Medwonders Health Network
- Health News Index
- News Quick Links
 | News Central | | Health Watch | |
| Latest Health News | | Health In Focus | |
| News Category (500+) | | Breaking Health News | |
| Popular News | | Celebrating Life | |
| Health News and Press Release | | Medindia - Exclusive | |
| News Photo Gallery | | India Special | |
| News Video Gallery | | Lifestyle and Wellness | |
| News From Other Resources | |||
 |
Flu
Complete Medindia Resources
|
| News Categories: |
| » | Report: A Lot of Americans Have No Access to Health Care |
| » | Greece Faces Humanitarian Crisis as Health Care Access Declines in EU, Doctors Group Warns |
| » | HCCI Report Says Rising Prices for Care Responsible for Increased Healthcare Costs for Privately Insured Americans |
| » | Treatment in ED is Based on Children's Insurance Status |
| » | US Spends Most on Healthcare Without Providing Superior Care |
| More Insurance News | |
|
Bird Flu Related News |
||||||||
| » | Vietnam Struggling To Combat New Cases Of Bird Flu | » | Mutant Bird Flu Studies are Freed for Publication | |||||
| » | Vietnam Approves $23 Million to Tackle Bird Flu | » | Chickens Culled in Nepal Farm | |||||
| » | What Causes Lung Injury in Severe Flu? | » | New Flu Virus Identified in Fruit Bats | |||||
| » | Bird Flu Alert For Bihar | » | Bird Flu More Common, Less Lethal Than Thought: Study | |||||
| Read More >> | ||||||||
