Better Yellow Fever Vaccine Possible
Dutch researchers
have found the crucial bit of virus that people's immune systems need to
spot and quash yellow fever.
Howard Hughes
Medical Institute international research scholar Jan ter Meulen, of Leiden
University Medical Center, in the Netherlands, said the findings may help
scientists improve the existing vaccine, which has rare but severe side
effects.
To protect people
from the disease, yellow fever vaccines must contain this essential fragment
of instruction to the immune system, according to ter Meulen.
The World Health
Organization estimates yellow fever, spread by mosquitoes, strikes more
than 200,000 people a year, mostly in Africa, killing about 30,000, the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute reports.
The findings
are published in the journal Virology.
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Copyright 2005 by United
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