FRIDAY, April 21, 2006 (HealthDay News) -- An experimental vaccine against West Nile disease shows early promise, U.S. researchers report.
The vaccine, ChimeriVax-West Nile, quickly triggered strong immune responses after a single dose in both preclinical tests and in a Phase I human clinical trial involving 80 people, say a team from the University of Massachusetts Medical School's Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research in Worcester and private vaccine developer Acambis Inc.
The findings appear online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and are expected to appear in the April 25 print issue. This is the first published report of a West Nile vaccine candidate in humans.
For the recombinant West Nile vaccine, researchers removed specific genes from the yellow fever virus known to induce immunity to that pathogen in humans. They then replaced them with the corresponding genes of the West Nile virus.
The findings indicate that this is a promising candidate that warrants further evaluation. Acambis has launched a Phase II clinical trial to test ChimeriVax-West Nile in more than 200 people.
Currently, there is no human vaccine for West Nile virus, which has caused 19,000 reported infections and 750 deaths in the United States since 1999.
More information
The U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases has more about West Nile Virus.
