Vaccinations studies

I have been involved in the studies in the UK at the Churchill hospital in Oxford for about 18 months.

I have had a trial vaccination and follow up blood tests etc since the start but have been waiting for a booster vaccination for approx 5 months now. It keeps getting put back and back as new strains are being tested etc.

Has any other ATS'er been/is involved in any bird flu vaccination studies and do we all believe that we may be saved by what I am doing???

I'm not involved in anything, but I did read that UK-based Acambis has had successful clinical trials with their ACAM-FLU-A vaccine. The vaccine is being developed to be a once-in-a-lifetime vaccine against type A influenza, as it acts on a different protein than conventional vaccinations, and this new target protein doesn't appear to mutate. Furthermore, since all pandemic influenzas are of type A (including H5N1), it does have the potential to be a vaccination against bird flu that could be stockpiled in advance of a pandemic.

An update -

Testing finishedwith me.....awaiting results later in year/next year to see if I have been any use to medical science

G

Thank you for donating your time and body to medical research, which may save lives.

As you mentioned already, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine depends on how fast new strains develop.

If h1n5 is a slow mutator, there is a good chance that a vaccine would be effective, but if if mutates quickly enough to outpace the new vaccines for each strain, then unfortunately its effect will be marginal.