Study suggests that development of swine flu vaccine could take up to six months

NEW YORK It could take up to six months to develop a vaccine for swine flu in the event of a pandemic, researchers in England said Monday.

And by the time that happens, the first stages of the pandemic could be over.

Researchers at the University of Leicester and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust warned in a paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that researchers should instead develop pre-pandemic vaccines to induce immune responses before a pandemic hits.

“Proactive priming before the next pandemic could induce immune memory responses to novel influenza antigens,” University of Leicester professor and lead study author Iain Stephenson wrote.

The researchers analyzed immune cell memory and antibody responses in 54 patients who received a vaccine for the H5N1 bird flu. Of those patients, 24 had received a vaccine for the H5N3 flu strain between 1999 and 2001. After 21 days, the patients who had received the H5N3 vaccine had a larger number of immune cells that could fight the H5N1 virus than those who had not received it.

“These results suggest that pre-pandemic vaccination strategies should be considered,” Stephenson wrote.