AT first the two Vietnamese adults had nothing in common but the good fortune to survive a brush with H5N1 bird flu. Now they share something else: their immortalised blood cells may help stop bird flu from becoming a global pandemic.
Antibodies made from the pair鈥檚 blood cells have cured mice infected with the H5N1 virus, suggesting they might make an effective treatment or preventive therapy for humans. All 20 mice given the antibodies three days after infection with H5N1 survived, compared with none of the five mice not given antibodies. They also worked as a preventive therapy when given before the mice were infected (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0040178).
鈥淚f it works after three days, that鈥檚 very good news,鈥� says Albert Osterhaus, a bird flu expert at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who was not involved in the study. 鈥淚t means you could use it after the first symptoms.鈥� The antibody treatment could be combined with antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu, says Cameron Simmons at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, who led the study.
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However, antibodies may be costly and hard to mass-produce, meaning their greatest benefit may be treating the few people who catch the disease directly from birds, and to contain local outbreaks. 鈥淭his is not a tool for public-health-level control of H5N1,鈥� says Simmons. The antibodies may also not be effective if the virus mutates.
