Australia starts 1st swine flu vaccine trials

[Anonymous]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... gD99JB34O0

ADELAIDE, Australia — The world's first human trials of a swine flu vaccine have begun in Australia, drug company officials said Wednesday, with the aim of controlling the virus that has so far killed more than 700 worldwide.

Two biotechnology companies have started injecting adult volunteers in the southern city of Adelaide with their vaccines. Adelaide-based Vaxine began trials Monday with 300 subjects, and Melbourne's CSL has 240 people in its seven-month trial, which started Wednesday. The companies say their trials are the first tests of a swine flu vaccine on humans.

At least 41 people have died in swine flu-related illness in Australia, which is well into its winter flu season.

"We're in the southern hemisphere, and that is where the problem is right now," Vaxine research director Nikolai Petrovsky told The Associated Press. "The demand was here yesterday. We're right in the middle of a surge of swine flu cases where perhaps the United States won't have to worry about it as much until their flu season hits in six months."

Australia had confirmed 14,703 cases of swine flu as of Wednesday. The worldwide death toll from swine flu is more than 700, according to the World Health Organization, which recently stopped counting the number of cases worldwide. An explosion of cases is predicted in September and October, when students and workers in the northern hemisphere return from summer vacation.

CSL expects that initial results will allow distribution of its government-funded vaccine in October. The federal government has already ordered 21 million doses of CSL's vaccine for use in Australia, should it be proven to work.

"We have a specific vaccine that we believe will be able to protect millions of people against this new H1N1 flu," Andrew Cuthbertson, CSL's director of research and development, told reporters. He called swine flu "a novel strain of influenza" and said the trial would determine the dose and schedule of the vaccination.

Vaxine's Petrovsky said it would be six to eight weeks before results would verify whether a vaccine was effective.

"There is no guarantee any of these vaccines will work," he said. "Swine flu is a very peculiar beast, its a very different virus that we're dealing with. But we are hopeful."

Medical experts warned against rushing the vaccines through trials.

"I think it's important for the public to know that they're going to get a safe and effective vaccine," Andrew Pesce, president of the Australian Medical Association, told Sky News television. "No one will give anybody brownie points for putting out a vaccine that didn't work or caused harm."

So Sad!

[LatinAmericanview]

World Health Organization, which recently stopped counting the number of cases worldwide

What? I don't understand! How can you track a thing you stop counting?

[Anonymous]

Flu Vaccine Panel Creates Priority List

A complicated list of who should get pandemic flu vaccine in the fall is now set. When the vaccine starts arriving in September, first in line will be pregnant women; the caretakers of infants; children and young adults; older people with chronic illness; and health-care workers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03607.html

That's the advice of a 15-member committee of experts, which met all day Wednesday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to advise the federal government on vaccine policy.

The priority list names targeted groups and suggests the order in which they should be vaccinated. While acknowledging the potential for confusion, the committee chose the strategy because of the possibility that the epidemic will be peaking within four to six weeks of when the vaccine becomes available.

"The results of this meeting will kick planning into high gear," said Pascale Wortley of the CDC's Immunization Services Division. "This is a watershed moment."

All that's missing is the vaccine, knowledge of how well it works and the nitty-gritty details of how to deliver it to people's arms and noses.

All that's missing is a epidemic

Manufacturers expect to deliver about 40 million doses of vaccine to the government and private distributors in September, and another 80 million doses in October. About 80 million doses a month will be delivered after that.

The vaccine will come in two forms: the traditional flu shot and a "live" vaccine squirted into the nose that contains a weakened version of the new virus.

Unlike nearly every previous effort to get people to use flu vaccine, the promotion of the pandemic vaccine won't first try to reach the elderly. That's because people 65 and older have contracted the new strain at the lowest rate of any age group and appear to be largely protected because of exposure to other distantly related flu strains that circulated decades ago.

The top-priority group includes about 160 million people and contains five populations: pregnant women; household contacts of children younger than 6 months; health-care and emergency medical services workers; everyone 6 months to 24 years old; and people 25 to 64 who have conditions that put them at higher risk of serious infection and death.

Only a fraction of each targeted group is expected to want the vaccine. Once the priority groups have been immunized, the vaccine can be offered to healthy adults ages 25 to 64, and after them, people 65 and older, the committee advised.

Health departments, clinics and private physicians will continue to urge the elderly to get the seasonal flu vaccine, which contains three strains circulating the world along with the new one.

The groups were selected because of long-standing knowledge of influenza outbreaks and the particular behavior of the new virus, which emerged in Mexico and Southern California in late April. Derived from two strains carried in pigs, the new influenza A (H1N1) virus was originally called swine flu.

yeah whatever

Pregnant women account for about 6 percent of H1N1 deaths, as well as cases serious enough to require hospitalization, Anthony Fiore, a physician and epidemiologist at the CDC, told the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Children younger than 6 months do not produce a strong immune response to flu vaccine and are best protected by keeping them away from the virus, which is spread by coughing, sneezing and touching. Physicians, nurses and paramedics are high on the list because of the work they do.

In outbreaks during the spring, people ages 12 to 18 were hospitalized at twice the rate of people ages 19 to 24 and five times the rate of those 25 to 49. Of the 302 U.S. deaths recorded so far, more than half of those patients had an underlying chronic illness or medical condition such as asthma, diabetes, immune deficiency or morbid obesity.

In the "Asian flu" pandemic of 1957, which many experts believe is a model for the current one, many communities experienced an explosive spread of the virus once schools opened and the weather cooled.

Although CDC experts originally suggested making age 18 the ceiling of the healthy-young-people target group, the committee raised the age to 24 to include college students.

Some of the vaccine will be stored in multi-dose vials containing thimerosal, an antibacterial additive that contains mercury. But there will also be single-dose syringes without thimerosal, a substance that some assert is harmful to children.

Among the many unanswered questions is whether two doses will be necessary to provide full protection, how close in time two shots can be given and how big the dose will be. Vaccination programs may start before the answers are known.

Clinical trials in which the prototype vaccine will be tested in hundreds of children and adults are just beginning. Data on the effectiveness of one shot will be available in mid-September; two shots, in late September.

why not 10 shots - make em really rich

[Anonymous]

http://enews.mcot.net/view.php?id=11165

Thailand beginning human trials of A(H1N1) vaccine early next month

BANGKOK, Aug 5 (TNA) - Thailand will begin influenza A(H1N1) flu vaccine human trials in early September after the first batch of vaccine is expected to be successfully produced mid-August, the director of the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO) said on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Public Health on Wednesday confirmed 16 new flu fatalities in the week up to Sunday, bringing the country's death toll to 81.

GPO Director Dr Vithit Atthavejjakul said animal trials of the A(H1N1) vaccine is now being conducted in the Netherlands and it will take about six to seven days to complete.

After the animal trials are complete, he said, the first lot of influenza A(H1N1) vaccine will be successfully produced on August 16 and the vaccine testing on human will be conducted in early September.

Dr Vithit said that the GPO will produce 300,000 tablets of the anti-flu drug Oseltamivir for children next week.

The dosage of the antiviral pills will be reduced to 30 milligrammes and 45 milligrammes, he said, adding that the production of liquid Oseltamivir is expected to take a few more months.

Dr Vithit said the children's drug will be distributed to hospitals nationwide next week and the dosage of pills will be prescribed by doctors calculating from the weight of child patients.

Meanwhile, Dr Veerasak Kiatpadungkul, deputy director of Maharat Nakhon Ratchasima Hospital in the northeast, said that the hospital is keeping close surveillance on a 32-year-old mother 26 weeks pregnant who has contracted the virus.

The mother is in critical condition as she has high fever, suffering severe asthma symptoms and needs a respirator.

Dr Veerasak said that the hospital earlier transferred an 18-year-old mother six months pregnant to a hospital in Bangkok as she suffered lung infection and respiratory system failure.

Last Friday, a 26-year-old mother in Ratchaburi province who prematurely delivered a baby daughter after her lung became severely infected with the A (H1N1) virus succumbed after being treated one week at the hospital. Her daughter became Thailand's first case of prenatal virus infection. (TNA)

 General News : Last Update : 19:48:16 5 August 2009 (GMT+7:00)

[Anonymous]

5 countries conducting clinical trials

http://terrance.who.int/mediacentre/aud ... A_H1N1.mp3

choice of words very funny