Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center say that they have been exploring the idea of antibody therapy to help stop the spread of bird flu. The virus, also known as avian influenza, is not a big risk to human beings currently.

The team’s findings were published in late January in the journal Science. They explored the “preventive effects” of administering a neutralizing antibody (created by AstraZeneca) before infection to minimize severe disease caused by H5N1 avian flu. But only the severity of the virus’s symptoms was lessened in monkeys, and fewer deaths occurred.  And logistically, how could all of the birds be administered this antibody treatment? It seems an unlikely solution.

Douglas Reed, associate professor of immunology at Pitt’s School of Medicine and a faculty member of its Center for Vaccine Research, said this type of therapy differs from a traditional vaccine but the basic principle of using antibody therapy to prevent and treat disease has been around for more than 100 years. –Texarkana Gazette

“Vaccines help the body make its own antibodies. In contrast, inoculation with a broadly neutralizing antibody offers more direct protection by binding to and neutralizing H5N1 virus particles,” said Mr. Reed, who is the study’s co-corresponding author. The NIH’s National Cancer Institute describes a neutralizing antibody as one that “binds to a virus and interferes with its ability to infect a cell.”

“We chose this specific antibody because it targets a part of the influenza virus called the stalk region of the hemagglutinin protein, which stays the same across different flu strains. Focusing on this stable part of the virus makes it harder for the virus to mutate and avoid the antibody,” Reed said. “That said, antibody inoculation is not intended to protect against an infection, but can make the disease symptoms less severe and protect against death.”

“There is a big potential for this virus to cause a lot of suffering in the human population should it acquire the ability to transmit from person to person,” said Andrew Pekosz to the Post-Gazette in January. He is a professor and vice chair of the molecular microbiology and immunology department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Any solution that relies on injecting massive numbers of animals or people with anything may be destined to fail. It would take a massive effort to create the injections and then another push to administer them to large numbers of the population.

What do you think? Will injections be the solution?