Bangkok Int. Conference Avian Influenza, Jan 23-25

[Dutchy]

Bangkok International Conference on Avian Influenza 2008 :

Integration from Knowledge to Control

January 23-25, 2008 at Napalai Ballroom, The Dusit Thani, Bangkok, Thailand


Link to Conference Program:

http://www.biotec.or.th/AIConf2008/h...ce-Program.asp


Edit

Thailand to host bird-flu conference


www.chinaview.cn 2008-01-14

BANGKOK, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Thailand will host an international conference from Jan. 23-25 on avian influenza aimed at finding the best solution to dealing with and preventing outbreaks of the bird flu virus.

About 400 scientists and health experts from 40 countries will attend the conference, at which more than 140 research programs and studies will be addressed, local news network The Nation said on Monday.

The event will host seminars, mini conferences and workshops where experts will share ideas on the direction of scientific development and trends in bird flu treatment and prevention.

Prasit Palitpongarnpim, chairman of the organizing committee, said the conference will focus on the need to improve outbreak prevention plans in humans and poultry including the development of vaccine.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_7421641.htm

[Dutchy]

Experts urge stockpiling of flu vaccine additives

Wed Jan 23, 2008

By Tan Ee Lyn

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Leading infectious disease experts called on Wednesday for the separate stockpiling of additives, or adjuvants, to help boost the effectiveness of vaccines to fight the next flu pandemic.

Experts have warned for years that a flu pandemic is long overdue and scientists at a conference in Bangkok said the H5N1 bird flu virus remained a key candidate, but another avian influenza virus could unleash such a catastrophe.

Albert Osterhaus, a microbiologist at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, said stockpiling adjuvants might well be the solution if another virus ended up stealing the show.

"There's a lot of discussion to vaccinate people against H5N1 with adjuvanted vaccines. We might do that, but it's very expensive and it might well be that the pandemic outbreak may not be caused by H5N1 but by H7, H9 or H2" viruses, he said.
Vaccines are created with antigens, or substances like toxins, viruses and bacteria that stimulate the production of antibodies when introduced into the body.

But because there will not be enough antigen to go around in a pandemic, experts have been trying to address that problem by using boosters, like adjuvants.

Osterhaus said adjuvants should be stockpiled separately from antigens.

"Adjuvants can be stockpiled and H5 antigen as well. So if the pandemic is going to be H5N1, you just mix them and you get a vaccine," he said.

"If not, you rapidly produce the antigen and add it together with the adjuvant."

Other speakers at the three-day conference called for a wider approach to pandemic preparedness, but they stressed that H5N1 was likely to be the most lethal candidate.

Although the virus has infected only 351 people around the world since 2003, it has killed 219 of them, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

"If H5N1 were to become the pandemic, its severity would be catastrophic. But we need to look broader than that with regard to our pandemic preparedness plans," said Malik Peiris, a leading microbiologist based in Hong Kong.

A few studies in the past year have found that adjuvants help stretch limited supplies of experimental bird flu vaccines and even help confer protection against a broader number of H5N1 strains.

Osterhaus cited a study showing that an experimental vaccine designed to fight a H5N1 strain found in Vietnam in 2003 was also effective against another H5N1 strain that cropped up in Indonesia in 2005.

He said he was convinced that adjuvants would work in the case of other antigens, like H7, H9 or H2, but that studies were being done to confirm that.

http://www.reuters.com/article/healt...80123?rpc=401&

[Dutchy]

Scientists say bird flu threat still real

Wed Jan 23, 2008

By Darren Schuettler

BANGKOK (Reuters) - The world cannot afford to be complacent about the H5N1 bird flu virus despite its failure to trigger a human pandemic four years after sweeping across most of Asia, experts and officials said on Wednesday.

The latest outbreaks in India underscored the need for constant vigilance against a virus endemic in birds in parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, they told a Bangkok conference.

"We can't afford to be complacent and say, 'Look, it hasn't happened yet among humans'," Yongyuth Yuthavong, Thailand's Minister of Science and Technology, said in opening the three-day gathering of scientists from 40 countries.

"It's not a problem that can be solved overnight," he said.

The virus has killed millions of chickens and ducks and despite the slaughter of millions more and vaccination campaigns, it remains entrenched in many poultry populations.

People become infected only rarely, but the fatality rate is still high. Of the 351 human cases recorded since 2003, a total of 219 have died, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Although H5N1 has not yet evolved into a virus that can pass easily between humans, it could still do so, said Robert Webster, of St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.

"It is a dangerous virus and one that we cannot afford to trust. It still has the potential to reassert and become a catastrophe for humans like it is in chickens," he said.

Others argue the jury is still out on whether H5N1 will trigger a global flu outbreak that could kill millions of people.

"I'm not convinced H5 really has the ability to jump into humans and cause the next pandemic," Peter Palese, a professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, told Reuters.

"Most of the human cases are the result of a large dose infection," he said, such as victims who come into close contact with sick birds.

"If you are a chicken it's a serious problem, but I'm not so sure it's the next pandemic strain," he said.

The conference will hear the latest research on vaccines for poultry and humans, although drugs for the latter are still going through various stages of licensing.

Another key issue was the lack of a new virus sharing deal after WHO-sponsored talks failed last year.

Indonesia, the nation worst hit by bird flu with 97 human deaths, has held back samples since August last year. It wants guarantees from rich countries and drugmakers that poor countries will get access to affordable vaccines made from their samples.

Webster called on all sides to resolve the impasse.

"We live in a global village and we must learn to share otherwise we are likely to pay the penalty for being selfish."

If and when a human vaccine is approved, the ability to make it is still woefully low, said Albert Osterhaus, a microbiologist at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands.

He said the current capacity of 400 million doses of flu vaccine would cover a fraction of the world's 6.6 billion people.

Other conference topics include the role of migratory birds as potential carriers, and strategies for detecting and containing the virus which has spread to more than 60 countries.

Since H5N1 re-emerged in Asia four years ago after a 1997 outbreak in Hong Kong, hundreds of millions of dollars have been ploughed into studying and fighting it.

But answers to key questions continue to elude scientists.

"We don't really know what it takes to be transmissible and we don't know where it's coming from. Where is it hiding out?," Webster told Reuters.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldN...80123?rpc=401&

[Dutchy]

Conference program: http://www.biotec.or.th/AIConf2008/h...ce-Program.asp

[Dutchy]

Don't blame wild birds for H5N1 spread - expert

Wed 23 Jan 2008,

BANGKOK, Jan 23 (Reuters) - There is no solid evidence that wild birds are to blame for the apparent spread of the H5N1 virus from Asia to parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, an animal disease expert said on Wednesday.

There was also no proof that wild birds were a reservoir for the H5N1 virus, Scott Newman, international wildlife coordinator for avian influenza at the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said at a bird flu conference in Bangkok.

After H5N1 was found in 2005 in a huge lake in central China where it killed over 10,000 wild birds, it turned up in parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, leading some experts to believe migratory birds may be to blame.

But Newman said there was no good reason for thinking so.

"We know that some wild birds have probably moved short distances carrying viruses and then they died, but we have not been able to identify carriage of H5N1 across large scale spatial distances and then resulting in spread to other birds and mortality in poultry flocks," Newman told Reuters.

He said fecal tests on some 350,000 healthy birds worldwide had to date only yielded "a few" positive H5N1 results.

Furthermore, in instances and places where wild birds were found with the disease, there were no concurrent outbreaks of the virus in poultry.

"So we don't have at this point in time a wildlife reservoir for H5N1 ... so they can't be a main spreader of the disease," Newman said.

He stressed the need to focus attention on the poultry trade, and particularly smuggling, adding that these factors may instead be spreading and sustaining the deadly disease.

"We recognise that poultry production, trade, both legal and illegal, and other bio-security issues are probably more important as far as being a mechanism that promotes the sustaining and spread of H5N1," he said.

Experts have warned for years that a flu pandemic was long overdue and they stressed at the three-day Bangkok conference that the H5N1 bird flu virus remained a key candidate.

The virus has killed millions of chickens and ducks and despite the slaughter of millions more and vaccination campaigns, it remains entrenched in many poultry populations.

Although the virus has infected only 351 people around the world since 2003, it has killed 219 of them, according to the World Health Organisation.

http://africa.reuters.com/commoditie...BKK319659.html

[drjagathv]

Originally Posted by Dutchy

Don't blame wild birds for H5N1 spread - expert

Wed 23 Jan 2008,

BANGKOK, Jan 23 (Reuters) - There is no solid evidence that wild birds are to blame for the apparent spread of the H5N1 virus from Asia to parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, an animal disease expert said on Wednesday.

There was also no proof that wild birds were a reservoir for the H5N1 virus, Scott Newman, international wildlife coordinator for avian influenza at the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said at a bird flu conference in Bangkok.

After H5N1 was found in 2005 in a huge lake in central China where it killed over 10,000 wild birds, it turned up in parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, leading some experts to believe migratory birds may be to blame.

But Newman said there was no good reason for thinking so.

"We know that some wild birds have probably moved short distances carrying viruses and then they died, but we have not been able to identify carriage of H5N1 across large scale spatial distances and then resulting in spread to other birds and mortality in poultry flocks," Newman told Reuters.

He said fecal tests on some 350,000 healthy birds worldwide had to date only yielded "a few" positive H5N1 results.

Furthermore, in instances and places where wild birds were found with the disease, there were no concurrent outbreaks of the virus in poultry.

"So we don't have at this point in time a wildlife reservoir for H5N1 ... so they can't be a main spreader of the disease," Newman said.

He stressed the need to focus attention on the poultry trade, and particularly smuggling, adding that these factors may instead be spreading and sustaining the deadly disease.

"We recognise that poultry production, trade, both legal and illegal, and other bio-security issues are probably more important as far as being a mechanism that promotes the sustaining and spread of H5N1," he said.

Experts have warned for years that a flu pandemic was long overdue and they stressed at the three-day Bangkok conference that the H5N1 bird flu virus remained a key candidate.

The virus has killed millions of chickens and ducks and despite the slaughter of millions more and vaccination campaigns, it remains entrenched in many poultry populations.

Although the virus has infected only 351 people around the world since 2003, it has killed 219 of them, according to the World Health Organisation.

http://africa.reuters.com/commoditie...BKK319659.html

Thank you very much indeed regarding updates. Please keep us informed on the new developments.

Dr Jagath Vasanthathilaka , Kandy, Sri Lanka.

[Dutchy]

Migatory birds study in search for flu vaccine

A scientific study will focus on the role of migratory birds in spreading the bird-flu virus between domestic and wild birds in Asia to track the virus pool, the head of World Health Organisation's collaborating centre on the ecology of influenza said yesterday. Published on January 24, 2008

Speaking at the three-day Avian Influenza 2008 conference at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Bangkok, which started yesterday, Professor Robert G Webster said the results of the study will be key in developing a bird-flu vaccine.

"We have to answer questions such as what are the ultimate reservoirs of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus? Why have the viruses not spread to the Americas and Australia? What are the molecular requirements that will permit H5N1 to acquire consistent transmissibility in humans? These are question that we have to address as the virus continues to evolve," he said.

Pandemic influenza is caused by the transfer of influenza A virus or virus gene segments from aquatic birds to humans and domestic animals.

Wild aquatic birds are the natural host of influenza viruses. These viruses exist in harmony with their hosts and are non-pathogenic, but after transfer to other species, they evolve rapidly. In the past century, there have been three pandemics in humans: Spanish flu in 1918, Asian flu in 1957, and Hong Kong flu in 1968.

These have emerged by mutating between human influenza viruses and those carried by aquatic birds or directly from other avian sources. It is now a decade since H5N1 emerged in Asia and the virus continues to spread and to increase its host range and genetic and antigenic diversity.

"The probability is that we are witnessing in real-time the evolution of pandemic strain and the virus is continuing to evolve," Webster said.

The remarkable genetic diversity of the H5N1 virus may have occurred because it moved successfully between multiple species of birds and mammals.

"The original virus, which emerged from an unknown source in the natural wild-bird reservoir, became highly pathogenic and established among the domestic waterfowl in Asia," he said.

From 1997-2004, H5N1 was largely confined to Southeast Asian countries with high death rates in domestic poultry and transmissions to humans, from which over 60 per cent of those infected had died.

In May 2005, H5N1 infected Bar-headed geese and other waterfowl on Qinghai Lake, China, killing a high percentage of infected birds. Subsequently the virus spread rapidly to India, Africa and European regions near Asia.

http://nationmultimedia.com/2008/01/...l_30063262.php

[Dutchy]

Bird Flu Infection May Go Undetected in Children, Study Finds

By Jason Gale

Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu infections in some children may be going undetected because the virus causes mild or no symptoms, researchers in Cambodia found, indicating more human cases have probably occurred than have been officially recorded.

A study of 674 people exposed to the deadly H5N1 avian influenza in two villages in Cambodia found seven had developed antibodies against the virus, indicating prior infection. All of the cases occurred in people aged 4 to 18, the researchers said in a study being presented at a conference in Bangkok today.

The finding indicates more people, particularly children and adolescents, may be contracting the virus without developing the high fever and severe pneumonia that's the hallmark of H5N1 in people. Three of every five reported human cases worldwide have been fatal. Higher rates of milder disease might indicate the virus has found a way to spread more efficiently in humans.

``We need to monitor because the virus can evolve, and this is one of the indicators to see whether it's found a way to penetrate the body,'' said Sirenda Vong, chief of epidemiology with the Pasteur Institute of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, who led the study.

Previous studies have looked for retrospective undiagnosed cases among health-care workers and people working in live- poultry markets. The surveys in Cambodia are the first targeting people living with diseased poultry in villages, the researchers said.

In early 2006, Vong and colleagues surveyed people in southern Cambodia living in households with H5N1-infected poultry flocks. Participants were asked about their exposure to poultry and their blood was tested for antibodies to H5N1.

No Pneumonia

The median age of the 1 percent of people identified as having been infected was 12 years, compared with 27 years for those who had no H5N1 antibodies. A similar study in Cambodia a year earlier found no previous cases, Vong said in an interview in Bangkok today.

Milder illnesses in children who don't develop pneumonia occur, researchers said in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week. Studies using blood tests to identify missed cases are ``limited'' and that asymptomatic or mild human H5N1 infection ``is rare,'' the authors said.

``You probably have more mild infections that are being missed because they are not being investigated purely because the surveillance system doesn't pick them up,'' said Malik Peiris, professor of microbiology at the University of Hong Kong, who has analyzed H5N1 cases in Southeast Asia.

Results of the Cambodian study support findings from a decade ago in Hong Kong, where human H5N1 cases were first reported in 18 people, six of whom died. Survival rates were higher among children, many of whom weren't severely affected, Peiris said in an interview in Bangkok yesterday.

Mild Cases

``Most of the children diagnosed in Hong Kong in 1997 had a very mild course of infection, they basically had a mild flu-like illness and they recovered,'' he said. ``I don't think there is any evidence to say the situation has changed.''

The World Health Organization has recorded 352 H5N1 cases since 2003. Of those 219 were fatal. The median age of patients is about 18, with 90 percent younger than 40 years.

Fatality rates are highest among people aged 10 to 19, and lowest among people older than 50, according to the New England Journal of Medicine study. Older patients may possibly have some preexisting immunity. The researchers said that about 15 to 20 percent of older adults have some antibodies to H5N1, possibly because of cross-protection resulting from previous influenza infections.

Children tend to have a greater number than adults of a specific type of receptor in their upper airway that's more ``avian-like,'' and which enables the H5N1 virus to more easily invade the body, Peiris said. In some people, the infection may be cleared by the immune system before it spreads to the lungs, where it has a greater chance of taking hold.

More Susceptible

Children may be more susceptible to H5N1 infection because their developing respiratory tract has fewer mucin-producing goblet cells that are carried in mucus and mop up flu viruses, said John Nicholls, associate professor of pathology at the University of Hong Kong, who has studied flu infection pathways in children. Their shorter respiratory tract means the virus needs to travel a shorter distance to invade the lungs, he said.

Mild infection could be the result of fewer viral particles entering the body, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...fer=healthcare

[Dutchy]

Experts probe high bird flu mortality rate in Indonesia

24 Jan 2008

Source: Reuters


By Tan Ee Lyn

BANGKOK, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Medical experts are worried about how death rates for H5N1 bird flu have shot up in places like Indonesia, and studies are being carried out to see if victims require higher dosages of drugs.

Although the H5N1 has only infected 352 people since 2003, it has killed 219 of them, with mortality rates rising to more than 80 percent in places like Indonesia in the past two years.

"It could be they are treated later, or the virus is different, more virulent. There are many maybes, including differences in susceptibility of the virus," Menno de Jong, a doctor who has treated bird flu victims in Vietnam, told Reuters on the sidelines of a bird flu conference in Bangkok.

He said a major concern was the H5N1 variant in Indonesia appeared to be less susceptible to oseltamivir, the antiviral used to combat the disease.

"It's not a (drug) resistant virus, it's just that a bit more drug (may be) needed to inhibit these (H5N1) clade 2 viruses," he said, referring to the sub-category that Indonesia's H5N1 virus has been classified under.

Studies are being conducted in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia to see if H5N1 patients need to be given higher dosages of oseltamivir.

Indonesia is the worst hit of the 14 countries where H5N1 has infected people since 2003. On Thursday, a 30-year-old man became 98th Indonesian fatality from the disease, the health ministry said.

Although bird flu remains an animal disease, experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed from human to human and kill millions.

But details emerged on Thursday on how the virus had been passed from mother to foetus in the case of a pregnant 24-year-old Chinese woman who died of the disease in 2005.

Jiang Gu, a leading scientist at Beijing University, said the virus was detected in most organs of the foetus, including the brain.

"It is capable of penetrating the placental barrier and infecting the foetus. (This is the) first evidence of such human-to-human transmission," Gu said. (Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/B610075.htm

[HenryN]

Commentary

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/01...Migration.html

[Theresa42]

Originally Posted by Dutchy

Bird Flu Infection May Go Undetected in Children, Study Finds

By Jason Gale

Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu infections in some children may be going undetected because the virus causes mild or no symptoms, researchers in Cambodia found, indicating more human cases have probably occurred than have been officially recorded.

A study of 674 people exposed to the deadly H5N1 avian influenza in two villages in Cambodia found seven had developed antibodies against the virus, indicating prior infection. All of the cases occurred in people aged 4 to 18, the researchers said in a study being presented at a conference in Bangkok today.

The finding indicates more people, particularly children and adolescents, may be contracting the virus without developing the high fever and severe pneumonia that's the hallmark of H5N1 in people. Three of every five reported human cases worldwide have been fatal. Higher rates of milder disease might indicate the virus has found a way to spread more efficiently in humans.

``We need to monitor because the virus can evolve, and this is one of the indicators to see whether it's found a way to penetrate the body,'' said Sirenda Vong, chief of epidemiology with the Pasteur Institute of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, who led the study.

Previous studies have looked for retrospective undiagnosed cases among health-care workers and people working in live- poultry markets. The surveys in Cambodia are the first targeting people living with diseased poultry in villages, the researchers said.

In early 2006, Vong and colleagues surveyed people in southern Cambodia living in households with H5N1-infected poultry flocks. Participants were asked about their exposure to poultry and their blood was tested for antibodies to H5N1.

No Pneumonia

The median age of the 1 percent of people identified as having been infected was 12 years, compared with 27 years for those who had no H5N1 antibodies. A similar study in Cambodia a year earlier found no previous cases, Vong said in an interview in Bangkok today.

Milder illnesses in children who don't develop pneumonia occur, researchers said in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week. Studies using blood tests to identify missed cases are ``limited'' and that asymptomatic or mild human H5N1 infection ``is rare,'' the authors said.

``You probably have more mild infections that are being missed because they are not being investigated purely because the surveillance system doesn't pick them up,'' said Malik Peiris, professor of microbiology at the University of Hong Kong, who has analyzed H5N1 cases in Southeast Asia.

Results of the Cambodian study support findings from a decade ago in Hong Kong, where human H5N1 cases were first reported in 18 people, six of whom died. Survival rates were higher among children, many of whom weren't severely affected, Peiris said in an interview in Bangkok yesterday.

Mild Cases

``Most of the children diagnosed in Hong Kong in 1997 had a very mild course of infection, they basically had a mild flu-like illness and they recovered,'' he said. ``I don't think there is any evidence to say the situation has changed.''

The World Health Organization has recorded 352 H5N1 cases since 2003. Of those 219 were fatal. The median age of patients is about 18, with 90 percent younger than 40 years.

Fatality rates are highest among people aged 10 to 19, and lowest among people older than 50, according to the New England Journal of Medicine study. Older patients may possibly have some preexisting immunity. The researchers said that about 15 to 20 percent of older adults have some antibodies to H5N1, possibly because of cross-protection resulting from previous influenza infections.

Children tend to have a greater number than adults of a specific type of receptor in their upper airway that's more ``avian-like,'' and which enables the H5N1 virus to more easily invade the body, Peiris said. In some people, the infection may be cleared by the immune system before it spreads to the lungs, where it has a greater chance of taking hold.

More Susceptible

Children may be more susceptible to H5N1 infection because their developing respiratory tract has fewer mucin-producing goblet cells that are carried in mucus and mop up flu viruses, said John Nicholls, associate professor of pathology at the University of Hong Kong, who has studied flu infection pathways in children. Their shorter respiratory tract means the virus needs to travel a shorter distance to invade the lungs, he said.

Mild infection could be the result of fewer viral particles entering the body, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...fer=healthcare

There were all the mild cases in children in Egypt this past Spring, too.

[sharon sanders]

As referenced above by Theresa -

One Egypt thread 2007:

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19286


H5N1 in 3rd Aswan Child thread 2007:

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19811

[Dutchy]

Engineered blood may help bird flu fight - Crucell

Fri 25 Jan 2008,

BANGKOK, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Blood taken from ordinary donors and engineered to recognise the H5N1 bird flu virus was able to protect mice from several strains of the disease, a researcher at Dutch biotechnology firm Crucell said on Friday.

The finding may offer another way to help fight H5N1, which experts fear could unleash a pandemic if it learns to move efficiently between people, which it cannot now.

Crucell created human monoclonal antibodies, or immune system proteins, by mixing antibody fragments taken from nine donors who were never exposed to H5N1 with antigens from two major H5N1 strains found in Vietnam and Indonesia.

Antigens are components in viruses and bacteria that stimulate the production of antibodies when they are introduced into the body.

One particular line of antibodies that Crucell created was able to neutralise several strains of the H5N1 on laboratory dishes -- most notably, strains found in Hong Kong in 1997, Indonesia in 2005 and Vietnam in 2003.

The scientists then injected the engineered antibodies into mice earlier given lethal dosages of H5N1 virus, Mark Throsby, project director for antibody discovery at Crucell, told a bird flu conference in Bangkok.

"Three days after the infection, we gave them the antibodies and we were able to protect all the animals. It reduced their disease and they became well again," Throsby told Reuters later.

The nine people who donated their blood were never exposed to H5N1 although they may have been boosted by vaccines against normal seasonal flu, he said. (Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Darren Schuettler)

http://africa.reuters.com/commoditie...snBKK6190.html

[Dutchy]

eFoodSafety Lab Test Demonstrates Efficacy of Citroxin(tm) against H5N1 Avian Influenza Virus

Friday, January 25, 2008; Posted: 03:22 AM

Scottsdale, AZ, Jan 25, 2008 (WORLD STOCK WIRE via COMTEX) -- EFSF | news | PowerRating | PR Charts -- eFoodSafety.com, Inc. (OTCBB: EFSF, www.efoodsafety.com) reports successful studies illustrating Citroxin'sTM ability to eradicate the H5N1 avian influenza (bird flu) virus in a chick embryo model. Preliminary studies were conducted at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, one of a few labs in Asia used by the U.S. Centers of Disease Control (CDC) to conduct research on treatments of H5N1.

The results of this study will be presented as a poster presentation at the International Influenza Conference (www.biotec.or.th/AIConf2008), to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, January 23-25, 2008.

The conference will be attended by nearly six hundred participants focused on avian influenza, including representatives from eFoodSafety as well as leading scientists and businesses from sixty-five countries.

The lead investigator of the study, states, “We are highly encouraged by these results and look forward to conducting additional studies to confirm the safety and effectiveness in eradicating H5N1.”

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/...0News/1026452/


About eFoodSafety.com



The company's Knock-Out Technologies, Ltd. subsidiary has developed an environmentally safe sporicidal product formulated entirely of food-grade components that eradicates anthrax and a germicidal product, Citroxin™ (formerly named Big Six Plus) - EPA Reg. No. 82723-1 that kills six major bacteria: E-coli, Listeria, Pseudomonas, Salmonella, Staphylococcus, and Streptococcus, Avian Influenza, and Black Mold.

The sporicidal product has completed its final efficacy laboratory study requisite for EPA registration.

In the study, it eradicated both Clostridium Sporogenes and Bacillus Subtilis with 100% efficacy on both hard and porous surfaces.

The OraPhyte™ product, which has been tested and shown to be effective at eradicating nematodes by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is currently at three major universities with outstanding Agricultural Departments undergoing crop-specific research.

[Dutchy]

Seasonal flu vaccine may help in fight against H5N1

Fri Jan 25, 2008



BANGKOK (Reuters) - Animals that have previously been vaccinated against seasonal flu appear to respond far quicker to experimental H5N1 bird flu vaccines, a study has found.

Many doctors believe that seasonal flu vaccines offer little or no protection against the H5N1 virus, which experts say may unleash a pandemic that could kill millions of people.

But a study by biotechnology firm MedImmune Inc, which produces influenza vaccine, found that ferrets that had been vaccinated against seasonal flu appeared to be more responsive when they were later administered the H5N1 vaccine.

"If you have previously received normal seasonal flu vaccine, you may have better response to the H5N1 vaccine," MedImmune's scientist Hong Jin told a bird flu conference in Bangkok.

Researchers at the National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome published a study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases in December showing that ordinary seasonal flu vaccines may provide a small amount of protection against bird flu.

Their study was among the first to support the idea that getting an annual flu shot may help people's bodies fight off the H5N1 virus.

In the laboratory, they added H5N1 virus to the blood and found that in some of the volunteers immune system proteins called antibodies acted against the bird flu virus.

In the MedImmune study, a group of ferrets was given seasonal flu vaccine, while a control group of ferrets were given nothing.

Forty days later, both groups were given H5N1 vaccines designed using seed virus taken from outbreaks of the disease in Hong Kong in 2003 and Vietnam in 2004.

They were then monitored for the production of H5N1 antibodies.

"We found much more response in ferrets that received (seasonal flu) vaccine before, whereas in control ferrets, you don't see the response," Hong told Reuters.

Huge volumes of antibody producing cells were seen in the ferrets that had both vaccines on day 45, but there was no antibody response in the control group, MedImmune said.

"Maybe the (seasonal flu) vaccine can induce immune response that can speed up response to H5 vaccine," Hong explained.

Both types of vaccines were administered using nasal spray. MedImmune first introduced its nasal spray influenza vaccine in 2003.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/arti...VACCINE-DC.XML