A spray in the nose of a cow could soon protect people from bird flu

In March of last year it was a premiere for cows when the US Agriculture Ministry announced that the highly pathogenic flu virus H5N1 had been found in cattle. Since then, most of the 70 cases of the people in the United States have come from the interaction with infected herds.

Now researchers from the University of Maryland and the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) will work on infections in cows and people by developing a nasal vaccine to protect dairy cattle from bird flu with support from a grant of 650,000 US dollars from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture of the USDA.

Preventing the transfer of the disease from cows to people reduces the likelihood that they develop into a human virus that can be handed over from person to person, say experts in infectious diseases.

Xiaoping ZHU, professor and chairman of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Maryland and the Wenbin Tuo of the Ars, plan to use the grant financing to adapt the nasal spray technology, which you originally developed for Covid-19 and Human Influenza. The vaccine could also be used in humans if necessary, they said.

“Preventing the initial infection and spread of H5N1 in cows means reducing exposure to the virus for other mammals, milk workers and the general public,” said ZHU. “And that is crucial for the treatment of the spread of bird flu.”

H5N1, the current bird flu, which circulates around the USA, is a moving goal that not only kills wild birds and poultry, but also quickly adapted that other types beyond dairy cattle and people are included over domestic cats, foxes, rash and even seals.

Although so far only one person has died of the virus – a backyard – chicken builder in Louisiana – the heavy skiingists are concerned that the virus, since more people are exposed to bird flu, must be mutated into a disease that could be transferred between people who are currently impossible.

ZHU and TUOS nose vaccine not only have to give quickly and easily. While spray-based vaccines, including mRNA vaccines, trigger immune cells in the blood that then attack a virus as soon as an infection begins, nasal vaccines go to the source of respiratory infections.

The ZHU and TUO vaccine provides a protein to the nose passages that block viruses from infecting cells into the airways and prevents infections. This significantly reduces the likelihood of people and other animals that complete the H5N1 virus of cows.