Aerial Baiting

Texas has annually taken to the air to fight the ground war on rabies. Over the last 18 years planes were loaded with hundreds and thousands of packets of rabies vaccines that are dipped in fish oil and fish meat. They will deploy 1.8 million packets this year over a larger area of rural south and west Texas.

The goal of this eradication effort is to vaccinate the foxes and coyotes in the rural areas to create a natural buffer zone from rabies that maybe passing into Texas from Mexico and surrounding areas. This program targets only fox and coyote transmitted rabies but is good start to keep enzootic levels down within these animals since they often have contact with livestock and humans. With the success of this program they will move onto skunk rabies.

The vaccination occurs when the animals eat the fish oil covered packets. January is the optimal time for this operation because food is in short supply because of the winter months and the bait becomes very enticing. Texas scientists got the idea for this aerial baiting system for the distribution of rabies vaccines from a program that was occurring in Canada. This method along with laws that mandate pet rabies vaccines keep rabies levels at an all time low.

Through the 18 years of running this program canine associated rabies fell from 122 to 0, and fox strain rabies fell from 244 to 0. Since the air drop began there have been no human cases of rabies in that region. This immunity circle is really doing its job in keeping rabies from spreading in wildlife and ultimately in the human population.

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-Victoria Anikst

Theydenovirus

Some interesting news about using adenovirus to deliver HIV (and other) vaccines. Seems not to work:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125840220390050981.html

cheers,

rohan

Okay, so this isn't exactly virology

The cover story for the science section in Newsweek is on treating drug addiction.  Apparenty, there are "vaccines" in the pipeline against addiction that train the body to recognize them and prevent them from crossing the blood-brain barrier.  This is so cool, but the article doesn't go into much detail over the mechanism (I would imagine antibodies would be an order of magnitude larger than any active ingredient in a drug, so it's a mystery to me how this works).  I feel like this might have a lot of backlash from conservatives that don't want to promote casual use of drugs.  Hopefully a dem will be in the White House when this is going for approval so we can all start using heroin (again)!

Dave

http://www.newsweek.com/id/114716

How you been vaccinated lately?

A study by NFID has found that many adults are skipping their vaccinations. There has been speculation about whether this is due to the high prices for the new vaccines ($150/shingles and $300/HPV) or some other reason. Right now, there isn't any mechanism to help those living on a low-income to afford them. Isn't this also the fault of doctors for not recommending them and explaining their benefits? Maybe people are skipping out on doctor visits, too. When did you last go to the doctor, for that matter?

Dave

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/01/23/adult.vaccines.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch