Israeli vaccine may work against swine flu too

August 31, 2009 - 10:42 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, General, health, Medical Breakthroughs, Technology 

With doctors and nurses around the world now declaring that there’s no way many of them will take the new swine flu vaccine being rushed out this fall because of safety fears, it’s not surprising that interest in Israeli company BiondVax Phamaceuticals is growing fast.

The company is developing a universal flu vaccine that is designed to protect you from every type of flu – whether it’s chicken flu, Hong Kong flu, regular flu, or cat in the hat flu. One shot can last three to five years.

Now the company has announced indications of possible success in a trial on rats against the current H1N1/A flu (swine flu). The company reported that antibodies specific to swine flu were found in blood samples from lab rats injected with the universal flu vaccine.

On rumors of this news alone, the company’s share price on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange rose 18 percent, prompting the exchange to suspend trading.

ISRAEL21c reporter Harvey Stein featured the company in June this year, when fears about the pandemic nature of swine flu were just coming to the fore. You can watch his great video above.

Don’t get too excited though. You won’t be able to sign up for a universal flu vaccine when flu season breaks out in the next few months. There’s still more development ahead.

Other Israelity reports on Swine flu:

It’s flu, but not as we know it

Anatomy of a flu panic

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It’s flu, but not as we know it

April 26, 2009 - 1:52 PM by · 4 Comments
Filed under: Environment, General, Life, Medical Breakthroughs 

Well, a few years ago, it looked like avian flu was going to be the great pandemic that would lay waste to the world’s population. Experts debated it, newspapers wrote billions of words on it, and a whole generation of children stopped picking up feathers. As the pandemic failed to materialize, however, gradually the fear subsided.

Is that pig safe?

Is that pig safe?

Now a new flu has suddenly emerged, and it’s spreading fast. There have already been some 80 deaths in Mexico from swine flu, and cases in the US and New Zealand. Now there’s a suspected case in Israel, of an Israeli who has just returned from Mexico.

With the World Health Organization declaring the disease a “public health event of international concern”, with “pandemic potential”, flu is once more the hot disaster story of the season, making rather a nice change from Iran.

Anti-viral drug Tamiflu is being touted as an answer, but Israel also has a possible alternative – Sambucol. This herbal extract has been on the market for years, selling well in the US and in over 17 countries around the world as a remedy for flu.

The herbal remedy, made from elderberry, was developed by Dr. Madeleine Mumcuoglu, a world-renowned Israeli virologist, and is said to cut the duration and severity of flu by up to half.
In 2006, a British medical research institute ran cell culture tests (clinical trials were off the agenda for obvious reasons), and announced that it was 99% effective against the avian flu virus, H5N1.

A year earlier, another study showed that the remedy was not just effective against human and avian flu, but also swine flu as well. Of course at that time no one really cared about flu from pigs.

I interviewed Mumcuoglu after the 2006 tests, and she told me then that it didn’t really matter where the flu originated. “Our research has shown that the antiviral effect of Sambucol is not strain-specific. It was effective against all influenza viruses tested,” she said.

“If you stop the flu virus at the beginning then you stop it going to the lungs, or from creating the additional complications that are normally the cause of death,” she added.

Now we have still to see what actually happens with swine flu. Newspapers love to scare the public, and the public apparently loves to be scared.

In Mexico, the government is recommending that people stop going to public places, kissing friends, or shaking friends with colleagues. Though I’m clearly no expert, if swine flu one day reaches your community, maybe it’s not such a bad idea to also try taking Sambucol as well – just in case.

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