Gold & Silver Forum - Universal flu jab works in people

Could Influenza type A virus be made extinct?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7171118.stm

A single jab that could give lifelong protection against all types of flu has produced promising results in human trials.

The vaccine, made by Acambis, should protect against all strains of influenza A - the cause of pandemics.

Currently, winter flu jabs have to be regularly redesigned because the flu virus keeps changing.

The new vaccine would overcome this and could be stockpiled in advance of a bird flu outbreak, say experts.

Promising results

Each year winter flu kills around 4,000 people in the UK.

Globally, between 500,000 and one million people die each year from influenza.

But a pandemic of the human form of bird flu, which experts believe is inevitable, could kill as many as 50m people worldwide.

http://www.acambis.com/default.asp?id=1367

About influenza

Influenza is the most important human respiratory viral disease. Influenza virus typically infects 10–20% of the total worldwide population during seasonal epidemics, resulting in three to five million cases of severe illness and 250,000 to 500,000 deaths per year . In the US, influenza kills an average of 36,000 people per year, while an average of 114,000 influenza-related hospitalisations result in an estimated annual economic cost of $12 billion . Moreover, totally novel influenza strains appear occasionally in the human population, causing pandemics. The death toll of the 1917–1920 Spanish Flu pandemic resulted in over 50 million deaths worldwide , and the danger of a new influenza pandemic is always present. The total production of influenza vaccine is about 250,000 doses . Nearly all these vaccines are trivalent, protecting against three virus strains predicted as most likely to cause the next epidemic. The selection of these strains is made annually by the World Health Organization.