Back to the West Nile Virus listserv archive.

Date: 13 Aug 2003
Posted by: ERAP

>STUDY: VACCINE PROTECTS MICE FROM WEST NILE
>from Newsday
>
>When used as a vaccine, a mild relative of the potentially deadly West Nile
>virus has protected mice from the more virulent disease, according to a team
>of Australian researchers.
>
>No treatment exists for mosquito-borne West Nile disease, whose prevalence
>peaks in mid- to late summer. The virus has spread exponentially across the
>country since it first invaded the nation through New York City in 1999. The
>national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday confirmed 197
>cases and six deaths so far this season. Another death is under
>investigation.
>
>Roy Hall and his team at the University of Queensland injected varying
>amounts of DNA from the Kunjin virus into weanling mice. Kunjin is a cousin
>of West Nile, both members of the flavivirus family. They then followed the
>Kunjin injection with a lethal dose of West Nile virus. They found that even
>those mice receiving the smallest Kunjin inoculation were protected from
West Nile.

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsnile123411101aug12,0,4628786.story

Thanks to Jery Stedinger for sending this news item.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
WESTNILEVIRUS-L is an email discussion group for communication and
discussion about West Nile Virus, particularly regarding policy, risk
reduction and public education issues. It is moderated by Dr. Lois Levitan,
Program Leader of the Cornell Environmental Risk Analysis Program.
Subscribers are encouraged to post to the group by sending an email to:
WESTNILEVIRUS-L@cornell.edu.  Postings must be written in plain,
unformatted text, and sent without attachments.  The subject line must
begin with the identifier [WNV-L], followed by a meaningful subject
description.  Archives are posted at:
http://environmentalrisk.cornell.edu/WNV/WNV-LArchiveIndex.cfm.
To subscribe (or unsubscribe), send an email request to
envrisk@cornell.edu. To receive messages once a day in digest
format, subscribers should send an email to listproc@cornell.edu
with message: "set WESTNILEVIRUS-L mail digest-nomime".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------