Cool cool cool. West Nile vaccine on the way.

[imported_Shanna]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0519120154.htm

ScienceDaily (2008-05-21) -- Researchers have made a giant leap forward in the race to develop a vaccine for the potentially debilitating West Nile virus. Researchers have found a way to generate immune response levels comparable to a live virus vaccine, which could also help suffers of other disease such as dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis.

[TangerineFizz]

Very cool. For some reason, this virus scares the shit out of me.

I've also wondered for some time why horses get vaccinated for it, but people don't.

[MSUlady]

People aren't vaccinated for it because it very rarely causes severe disease in humans. A lot of people get it and never know that they even have it. Middle of summer, kinda feel cruddy for a week or so - might have West Nile Virus. Horses, on the other hand, are very prone to the encephalopathy form of the disease which is most often fatal. It's a risk-benefit assessment. With current vaccines, the benefits of vaccination aren't enough to offset the risk in humans.

[imported_Shanna]

Loren had it... either last summer or the summer before. He got the rash and felt awful. It's tougher on men than women.

WNV does kill though. This to me is enough to seek a vaccine. If I lost one of my family members due to a stupid mosquito bite...

[MSUlady]

WNV does kill though. This to me is enough to seek a vaccine. If I lost one of my family members due to a stupid mosquito bite...

Agreed. At this point, though, I'm more comfortable using mosquito bite prevention than vaccination. Once a vaccine has been out for a while and shown itself to be safe in the general population, then I'll consider it.

But, interestingly, in humans (and even horses) the virus has gotten less severe. When it was first seen in the US, it was much more likely that someone would come down with the severe encephalopathy form. It's one of those weird traits of viruses - most viruses change over time to actually become less virulent. It's kind of like survival of the fittest. If a virus kills all of the hosts it infects, then it doesn't spread/reproduce very well. Better for the host to just get kind of sick, but still move around, spreading the virus all over the place.

Germs are diabolical!

[TangerineFizz]

I think it scares me cause I know there was one, maybe two severe cases of it in my city. I do make sure to use repellant though, but that scares me too LOL