Bird Flu H5N1, SARS; Flu &amp; Flu-Like Pandemic Threats

Top 98. Jan 9, 2006 7:08 AM

» Kirk - NNVC - NanoViricides, Inc.

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It looks like NNVC found support at the 50 day moving average. It also made a nice “W” bottom in December. Now it looks like we could see it attack the old high (@$1.27) as CMF and RSI have turned up.

Last year, when I purchased on the upturn in CMI, RSI was still over bought so it was a bigger gamble. Now anyone buying at the open of $1.05 has RSI and CMF as tailwind.

Disclaimer: I’m in at $1.01 and this is a VERY SPECULATIVE stock held only in my personal trading account. As I type, I don’t have plans to sell, but you should assume I could sell this at any time and not talk about it here ever again if you are interested in buying! I don’t want any charges of pump-and-dump if it jumps up huge and I sell.

For 2005, "Kirk's Newsletter Portfolio" was Up 13.2% vs. QQQQ up 1.2% vs. DJIA down 0.6% vs. S&P500 Up 4.8%

As of 12/31/05 the Total Return for "Kirk's Newsletter Portfolio" since 12/31/98 is Up 197% while the S&P500 only up 12%!!! & NASDAQ only up 1%!!! (my portfolio beta is roughly equal to that of QQQQ.)

What should be quite clear is a “buy and forget” market strategy using the DOW, S&P500 or NASDAQ would have under performed holding money funds over the past seven years while my newsletter portfolio nearly tripled every dollar invested

-- posted by Kirk

Top 99. Jan 9, 2006 7:47 AM

» Kirk - NNVC: Company to receive H5N1 (Avian Flu) biologics from Vietnam

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Press Release Source: NanoViricides, Inc.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060109/200601090...

NanoViricides Collaborates with Vietnam Government to Develop Drug To Treat Bird Flu Virus
Monday January 9, 8:00 am ET
Company to receive H5N1 (Avian Flu) biologics from Vietnam

WEST HAVEN, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 9, 2006--NanoViricides, Inc. (Pink Sheets: NNVC - News) announced today the results of the company's recent trip to Vietnam.

Company officials met with senior officials in the Ministry of Health which resulted in the signing of Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) with governmental agencies responsible for the prevention and treatment of the H5N1 virus. The MOU calls for the government to supply biological materials to Nanoviricides, Inc., which are needed to rapidly develop a drug treatment for avian flu (AviFluCide-I(TM)). The Company believes that other than the US Centers for Disease Control and an international organization based in Europe, no other government or company has been granted access to certain of these biologics.

"Our approach is virus-specific therapy. Having unique access to the H5N1 virus enables us to develop drugs that act directly against this particular virus, whereas other companies are developing drugs against common influenza virus and hoping that some of them may also work against H5N1," said Dr. Anil Diwan, President of Nanoviricides.

Terms of the MOU also call for the collaborative development of a treatment for rabies, a generally fatal disease. The MOU allows these governmental agencies to have an exclusive license to use these drugs for the Vietnamese market.

Eugene Seymour, MD, MPH, CEO of Nanoviricides, Inc., says, "The MOU with Vietnam is a landmark agreement. It will enable Nanoviricides, Inc. to pursue its goal of having AviFluCide-I(TM) tested in overseas facilities, because the company now has access to the current H5N1 strain of the virus. Our operational plan calls for testing to be completed in the next twelve weeks." Dr. Seymour added, "Our system is also perfectly suited to deal with certain potential bioweapon viruses such as Ebola and Marburg. To our knowledge, we have a major head start in the area of targeted anti-viral therapies.

Other Company news:

The Company has issued a "stop transfer" on approximately 3.8 million shares and options held by a former officer and the individuals involved with the "shell company" Edotcom.com, prior to its merger with NanoViricides. The Company will be seeking official and judicial relief as well as seek monetary damages for the harm caused to the Company. The Company will update its shareholders in a separate press release on this matter to be released within the coming days. These actions will help the Company complete its audit and become a reporting company. It is management's goal to meet the requirements necessary to be listed on a major exchange.

ABOUT NANOVIRICIDES, INC.

NanoViricides, Inc. is a development stage company that is creating special purpose nanomaterials for anti-viral therapy. A nanoviricide(TM) is a specially designed, flexible, nanomaterial with or without an encapsulated active pharmaceutical ingredient and a targeting ligand to a specific type of virus, like a guided missile.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that reflect the Company's current expectation regarding future events. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Actual events could differ materially and substantially from those projected herein and depend on a number of factors including the success of the Company's research and development strategy, the availability of adequate financing, the successful and timely completion of clinical studies and the uncertainties related to the regulatory process.

Contact:

NanoViricides, Inc.
Leo Ehrlich, 917-853-6440
leo@nanoviricides.com

Source: NanoViricides, Inc.

-- posted by Kirk

Top 100. Jan 10, 2006 8:02 AM

» Kirk - NNVC:Bird Flu Play - A DOUBLE!

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In response to NNVC:Bird Flu Play posted by Kirk:

Author: Kirk
Discussion: TA: Technical Analysis & Charting (10,200)+
Date: November 22, 2005 10:55 AM
Subject: NNVC:Bird Flu Play . .
OK... I bought 1,000 shares at $1.01 when it pulled back, smacked its support line and turned up.

A double!

One way to play this is to sell HALF the shares purchased to get your "out of pocket" risk to zero, then let the remaining shares run without worry. I don’t give “investment advice” but if you worry about gains turning to losses on these types of speculations, then I’d take profits.

Of course, I hope this goes to $10 or $100 because I don’t think Bird Flu is going away and this technology does sound promising. If they could get this company off the Pink Sheets, it could explode so having a tiny, $2,000 position in this company seems like a good risk for me at the time I type this note.

-- posted by Kirk

Top 101. Jan 10, 2006 2:52 PM

» Kirk - Girl Gets Bird Flu After Kissing Chicken

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Girl Gets Bird Flu After Kissing Chicken
Jan 10 2:04 PM US/Eastern

By BENJAMIN HARVEY
Associated Press Writer

VAN, Turkey

Sumeyya Mamuk considered the chickens in her backyard to be beloved pets. The 8-year-old girl fed them, petted them and took care of them. When they started to get sick and die, she hugged them and tenderly kissed them goodbye. The next morning, her face and eyes were swollen and she had a high fever. Her father took her to a hospital, and five days later she was confirmed to have the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

"The chickens were sick. One had puffed up and she touched it. We told her not to. She loved chickens a lot," her father, Abdulkerim Mamuk, said of the second youngest of his eight children. "She held them in her arms."

Her oldest brother, Sadun, said Sumeyya loved animals and took care of puppies and kittens in Van's Yalim Erez neighborhood.

When her mother saw Sumeyya holding one of the dying chickens, she yelled at her and hit the girl to get her away.

Sumeyya began to cry. She wiped her tears with the hand she'd been using to comfort the dying chicken.

"She wiped her face," said her father, speaking in broken Turkish and wearing a leather jacket and a typical Kurdish headdress in their bright, clean home. "She started to swell. She had a really high fever."

Following a few tense days when her family worried if she would recover, Summeya's condition has improved due to quick treatment with the antiviral drug Tamiflu, said Dr. Huseyin Avni Sahin, chief physician at the Van 100th Year Hospital.

But at least two other children have died of the same virus in Turkey, and as of Tuesday, 15 people had tested positive for infection in preliminary tests. Many are children.

The disease also appears to be spreading.

In parts of the world where the virus has been deadly _ until now only in East Asia _ children like Summeya have been the worst hit.

"It was the same in Asia," said Dr. Guenael Rodier, a scientist with the World Health Organization who has been chasing the virus around the world. "It mainly occurred in family clusters of small size, and mainly in children."

Rest of story here http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/10...

-- posted by Kirk

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

Top 102. Jan 12, 2006 10:14 PM

» Kirk - birdflu virus is evolving as expected

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Tests show birdflu virus is evolving as expected

12 Jan 2006 17:36:58 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Genetic tests of samples taken from Turkish victims of the bird flu virus show it has made a small change, but probably not enough to make it more dangerous yet, researchers said on Thursday.

The mutation is one of those that would be expected in a highly changeable virus, the experts said -- and is one of those that would be predicted to eventually allow it to cause a pandemic.

H5N1 avian influenza has caused a burst of human infections in Turkey and has been found in flocks of poultry across the country. It has killed at least two children in Turkey, probably three, and infected a total of 18 people, according to Turkish authorities.

Globally it has infected just 147 people and killed 78 of them, according to the tally from the World Health Organization, which only includes four of the Turkish cases.

Samples from two of the first Turkish victims were sent to a WHO-affiliated laboratory in Britain for analysis. Scientists are carefully watching the virus to see if it makes the changes needed to allow it to easily pass from human to human -- which could spark a pandemic that could kill millions.

There were two different strains of virus in the bodies of the teenage victims, said Dr. Ruben Donis, team leader of the molecular genetics team of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Influenza branch.

"One was a regular virus like we have seen in poultry in Turkey before -- no surprises there," Donis said in a telephone interview.

But half the viruses had a mutation in the a protein called hemagglutinin, which influenza viruses use to attach to the cells they infect. This protein is the "H" in a flu virus's designation.

EXPANDING ITS RANGE

This mutation has been found in the past to allow the virus to infect a greater range of cells via a structure known as sialic acid, Donis said.

"If you have this mutation, you have virus that can bind to more different sialic acid variations," he said.

This is only theoretical, Donis stressed. But when researchers have tested flu viruses in the lab, they found this particular mutation gave the virus a better ability to attach to human-like cells.

A spokeswoman at the World Health Organization said there was no evidence the mutation had much significance in making the virus either more transmissible to people, or more or less dangerous to them.

"It doesn't look as if it has significance regarding transmissibility or pathogenicity because it is not borne out by epidemiological evidence we have so far," WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng said in Geneva.

Donis said similar mutations have been seen in H5N1, in Hong Kong in 2003, when it first re-emerged in people, and later in Vietnam.

"If this was a wildfire mutation that would have caused the virus to spread like wildfire in a population, we would have seen it more often," he said.

The H5N1 virus remains largely a virus that affects birds. But all influenza viruses mutate and evolve very easily, and regularly change into what are known as pandemic strains, which spread rapidly around the world, infecting and killing unusually large numbers of people.

There has not been a flu pandemic since 1968 and health experts feel the world is overdue.

The H5N1 virus, they say, resembles the H1N1 virus that apparently jumped from birds to humans in 1918, causing an especially deadly pandemic before the virus evolved into a less dangerous form and the human population built up an immunity to it.

-- posted by Kirk

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/1373648...

Top 103. Jan 29, 2006 7:54 AM

» Kirk - A whole new approach to vaccines

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A whole new approach to vaccines

By Tom AvrilInquirer Staff Writer

Posted on Sun, Jan. 29, 2006

If you take a group of 1,000 people over 65, perhaps 100 of them will get the flu in any given year.

But if you take the same group and give them the flu vaccine, 50 or more will still come down with the disease.

In older people, the flu shot - though perfectly safe - simply doesn't work very well. And no one is entirely sure why.

Hildegund Ertl aims to find out.

Her goal: to make the next generation of flu vaccine, one that not only will work better in older people, but also will work against multiple strains of the disease - even the deadly avian flu, or a version cooked up by terrorists. Yearly shots would be a thing of the past.

A pioneering immunologist at Philadelphia's Wistar Institute, Ertl is leading a $10.1 million project with researchers from Wistar, Harvard Medical School, and Duke University - part of a broader government effort to prepare for potential bioterrorist attacks.

They are among a cadre of scientists who are refashioning the very architecture of vaccines, which have changed little in basic concept in the two centuries since Edward Jenner injected a farmer's son with cowpox virus.

The new vaccines are being tested against the tough diseases that have so far resisted medicine's best efforts, among them cancer, hepatitis C, malaria and AIDS.

The basic idea is still the same: to trick the body into revving up its defenses without making the person sick.

But rather than inject people with a dead or weakened form of a virus, scientists are using a bit of molecular sleight of hand to mimic certain signals emitted by a live virus. And they have a sophisticated technique that Jenner could only have dreamed of: genetic engineering.

Every year, the flu kills an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people in the United States. It and pneumonia are together the fifth-leading cause of death among those over 65.
The avian flu, should it mutate into a form that can be passed from person to person, would be far more deadly.

For most diseases, current vaccines fool the body into producing antibodies, the free-floating germ fighters that attack viruses in the bloodstream before they can infect a cell.

But this approach doesn't work well in the elderly, for reasons that are not fully understood. And with a new avian or bioterrorist flu, it would be no good for anyone. There simply would not be enough time to make the corresponding vaccine.

"You have a bioterror attack, and you need a year" to create the vaccine, said Ertl, a German native who came to Wistar in 1987. "We are not going to have a year."

Ertl and her colleagues want to stimulate a different weapon, one that goes to work after a virus has infected cells.

This second weapon - a white blood cell called a killer T cell - latches onto the infected cell and destroys it before it can make more virus.

"It's like bombing a manufacturing plant for bombs," Ertl said.

A tall, athletic woman who walks quickly and talks even faster in her accented English, Ertl jokes that she has a "combative" nature.

But she's deadly serious about combating disease. She was drawn to science because of its potential to save lives. Vaccines - the word is derived from the Latin vacca (cow), for the cowpox in Jenner's experiment - have prevented millions of deaths through the eradication of smallpox and near-elimination of polio.

"I do not know of any other medical intervention that had such a positive effect on society," she said.

Yet in the quest to target the best pathways in the immune system, her team must figure out exactly why the elderly are so vulnerable.

It could be that they have fewer germ-fighting cells. It could be that their cells don't fight as well. Or it could be that the cells work just fine, but somehow have been turned off.

The beginning of an answer may lie with the humble laboratory mouse.

Of mice and men

In a crowded lab in the basement of Wistar, an independent research institute on the University of Pennsylvania campus, sits a boxy white machine that looks like your average piece of office equipment.

Inside, though, is a remarkable pair of lasers that can analyze thousands of white blood cells in seconds.

The $125,000 machine is called a flow cytometer - from cyto (cell) and meter (measure). Wistar immunologist John Wherry is using it to compare the immune systems of young and old mice.

Along the way toward building a better vaccine, Wherry is sating his basic curiosity about why the elderly are more likely to get sick.

"I like to know the answer," he said.

He has dozens of questions about the mice.

How many of their white blood cells are killer T cells? After infection, how many of them are tailored to battle the flu? How able are they to secrete the enzymes that punch through the wall of an infected cell?

One day this month, postdoctoral researcher Vilma Decman placed small test tubes in the cytometer. Each contained perhaps 200,000 white blood cells from a mouse.
The cells had been stained with fluorescent antibodies so that when struck by lasers, they glowed, revealing a bonanza of information.

The young mice were adolescents, about a month old. The old mice were 2 years old - about 70 in human years.

The results show up in a series of graphs on a computer screen, thousands of colored dots in each.

As Decman ran the tests, a cluster of blue dots indicated that one young mouse had more virus-specific T cells than an older mouse she had tested immediately before.

In a sample from another young mouse, the number was not so high. Many more tests will be needed to determine whether, on average, young mice have more T cells, or whether their cells are simply better fighters in some way.

In another experiment, Wherry will extract T cells from old mice and put them into young mice, and see how well they protect the animals from infection.

Meanwhile, team member Arlene Sharpe at Harvard is doing similar experiments on genetically altered mice that can't turn on certain switches of their immune system.
At Duke, other scientists will test vaccines on samples of human blood.

The whole process, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will take years.
Janet McElhaney, an expert on the aging immune system who is not part of the project, said the team's approach sounds promising.

Her own research suggests that a key difference in the elderly is their level of granzymes, enzymes secreted by T cells that kill infected cells by dissolving their DNA.
"There seems to be a defect in how effectively these killer cells can kill," said McElhaney, a geriatrician at the University of Connecticut and the University of British Columbia.

One possibility: T cells in the elderly may shut down because they are "exhausted" from fighting chronic infections, said Harvard immunologist Gordon J. Freeman, another of Ertl's collaborators.

Scientists are not sure, but this shutdown may be a self-defense mechanism. Left unchecked, T cells can attack healthy cells, as occurs in autoimmune diseases.

The immune system makes protein signals to turn T cells on and off as needed, like a molecular light switch. For the new vaccine, Freeman has helped develop antibodies to manipulate these signals.

"The idea for making a vaccine better," he said, "is either to give it better turn-on signals or block turn-off signals."

An ever-changing enemy

The flu is a slippery character, a quickly mutating ball of genetic material cloaked in a spiky layer of proteins.
Each year, health officials make an educated guess about which flu strains will be prevalent.

Each year, manufacturers make millions of doses of the appropriate vaccine, growing the viruses in chicken eggs and then killing them with chemicals. The dead viruses, when injected into people, cause white blood cells to make antibodies.

One company also makes a live-virus vaccine, called FluMist, which is not approved for the elderly.

Because the proteins in the flu's outer shell evolve quickly, the manufacturing process must be repeated each year.

Ertl, who is among Wistar's top-funded researchers, thinks she has a better way.

The flu virus also has internal proteins, ones that are similar across many different strains of flu, including the avian strains now found in Asia. Those internal proteins stimulate the body's T-cell response.

Ertl plans to mimic that process with genetic engineering, by customizing a virus found in chimpanzees.

First, she is neutering the chimp virus, cutting out the genes that allow it to copy itself. Then she will insert flu genes into the virus so they will express the flu's crucial internal proteins.

Once injected, the custom-made virus will trick the body into thinking it has been infected by the flu, thereby teaching its T cells to marshal a rapid response in the event of a real infection.

Since these internal viral proteins do not evolve significantly from year to year, Ertl's team might be able some day to make a vaccine that protects people for decades, she said. Freeman's T-cell-enhancing antibodies will be added for an extra boost.

The science may seem complex, but to Ertl, it comes down to a simple fight.

"You have your enemy, the virus, in certain numbers, and you have the soldiers, the T-cells in certain numbers," she said. "You have to look at it just like a war."

Contact staff writer Tom Avril at 215-854-2430 or tavril@phillynews.com

-- posted by Kirk

Top 104. Feb 14, 2006 1:19 PM

» Kirk - Bird Flu- How to spot the epidemic!

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Center for Disease Control has released a list of symptoms of bird flu. If you experience any of the following, please seek medical treatment immediately:

1. High fever
2. Congestion
3. Nausea
4. Fatigue
5. Aching in the joints
6. An irresistible urge to poop on someone's windshield.

-- posted by Kirk

Top 105. Feb 14, 2006 2:19 PM

» Normxxx - A whole new approach to vaccines

In response to A whole new approach to vaccines posted by Kirk:

In older people, the flu shot - though perfectly safe - simply doesn't work very well. And no one is entirely sure why.

Probably because the spleen (where new antibodies are formed) ages like everything else! But, more power to her.

You forgot the definitive symptom,

"7. The urge to poop on someone's head!"

-- posted by Normxxx

Top 106. Feb 15, 2006 11:06 AM

» Normxxx - Seniors versus vaccines

Experimental Shingles Vaccine Proves Effective in Nationwide Study
Stronger version of chickenpox vaccine cuts incidence and severity of shingles in older adults

By NIH News, | 15 February 2006
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

In one of the largest adult vaccine clinical trials ever, researchers have found that an experimental vaccine against shingles (zoster vaccine) prevented about half of cases of shingles— a painful nerve and skin infection— and dramatically reduced its severity and complications in vaccinated persons who got the disease. The findings appear in the June 2 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

[ Normxxx Here: I was a participant in this study. I got the vaccine (not the placebo) and am now participating in the extended study. However, the dosage we received was some 10X what children receive for chicken-pox prevention. There were no sequelae, except that the site of the injection was a little itchy and tender for about a week after the injection (so I knew immediately I had gotten the real thing; saline solution does not cause such a reaction for so long). ]

The Shingles Prevention Study, conducted over 5½-years, was led by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and carried out in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Merck & Co., Inc. (Whitehouse Station, NJ).

“This is very promising news for older persons,” says Stephen E. Straus, M.D., an infectious diseases specialist at NIAID and Director of the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, who participated in the design, oversight and conduct of the trial. “These striking results indicate for the first time that we can use a vaccine to prevent shingles, one of the most common and debilitating illnesses of aging. And among vaccine recipients who did get shingles, the episodes generally were far milder than they otherwise would have been.”

“For some people, shingles can result in months or even years of misery,” comments study leader Michael N. Oxman, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at the San Diego VA Healthcare System and the University of California, San Diego.

Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is caused by reactivation of the virus that causes chickenpox. Once chickenpox infection has run its course, the virus is not eliminated; rather, it retreats to clusters of sensory nerve cells usually located near the spinal cord, where the virus persists in a dormant state. As immunity weakens with advancing age, the virus can reactivate, multiply in and damage sensory nerve cells to cause pain. It then migrates to the skin, causing the blistering rash of shingles.

Generally, shingles first manifests as pain, itching or tingling in an area of skin on one side of the body or face. Then a painful blistering rash develops in that same area of skin; the rash can take two to four weeks to heal.

Anyone who has had chickenpox— which includes most adults in the United States— could develop shingles, though not all will. The two major risk factors are increasing age and declining immunity. Half of all people who live to age 85 will get the disease. Experts estimate more than a million new cases of shingles occur in the United States each year.

The trial was conducted at 22 study sites nationwide, including 16 VA medical centers and six clinical research sites outside the VA system coordinated through NIAID. Between November 1998 and September 2001, the multicenter research team enrolled more than 38,500 men and women age 60 or older into the study. Half of the participants received a single injection of the zoster vaccine— a live, weakened form of varicella-zoster virus, the virus responsible for chickenpox; the other half received a placebo vaccine. Neither the researchers nor the participants knew who received vaccine and who received placebo until after the study was over. The zoster vaccine used in the study, manufactured by Merck, is a new, more potent version of the chickenpox vaccine used to prevent chickenpox in millions of American children every year since 1995. The zoster vaccine was developed specifically for study in older adults.

During an average of more than three years of follow-up, the vaccine reduced the incidence of shingles by 51 percent: 642 cases of shingles occurred among those in the placebo group compared with only 315 in the vaccinated group. Among all vaccine recipients, the total burden of pain and discomfort due to shingles was 61 percent lower than in placebo recipients. Moreover, the zoster vaccine reduced the incidence of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN)— a form of chronic nerve pain that is the most common serious complication of shingles— by two-thirds compared with placebo. The vaccine was well tolerated, with the rates of serious adverse events low and local reactions at the vaccination site generally mild.

“As people live longer, and the proportion of older people in our population increases, it is highly likely that the prevalence of shingles will increase. A preventive shingles vaccine would be an enormous boon for the health and quality of life of seniors,” says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID director. “We are extremely gratified that this public-private partnership has led to these exciting results, which have the potential to greatly benefit seniors in years to come.”

Approximately 12 percent of older people with shingles experience pain lasting for 3 months or longer (the definition of PHN used in the study). As people age, however, shingles-associated nerve pain increases in frequency and severity. This complication may occur in nearly one-third of persons with shingles who are 60 years of age or older.

Patients with PHN often describe the pain as burning, throbbing, aching, stabbing or shooting, and it can cause both physical and emotional suffering. What can be most distressing and debilitating, according to these patients, is that at least 90 percent of them have allodynia— pain caused by something that ordinarily is not painful, such as clothing touching the skin, or a cool breeze. Simply dressing and having a shirt touch the side of the body that is affected can be excruciating.

Postherpetic neuralgia is difficult to treat. Antiviral medications can speed the healing of shingles and reduce the severity of nerve damage caused by the disease, but only if these medications are used within 72 hours of the first sign of a shingles rash. Thus, it is important for people to recognize the symptoms of shingles and get to a doctor quickly. Antiviral medications do not help relieve PHN once it has begun.

The researchers emphasize that the zoster vaccine was tested only as a preventive therapy and is not intended as a treatment for those who already have shingles or postherpetic neuralgia. On April 25, Merck announced that it had submitted a license application to the Food and Drug Administration for the zoster vaccine. If approved for use, the research team estimates the vaccine could prevent 250,000 cases of shingles that occur in the United States each year and significantly reduce the severity of the disease in another 250,000 cases annually.

The study was funded by the VA and by Merck, which supplied the vaccine and placebo. The James R. and Jesse V. Scott Fund for Shingles Research provided additional funds.

-- posted by Normxxx