Tag: vaccines
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Give It a Shot
To celebrate the beginning of World Immunization Week, let’s focus on its biggest roadblock – vaccine hesitancy.
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Can the body remove HIV by itself?
Two patients have astonishingly cured themselves of HIV without any therapy. Kevin Boyle discusses these novel findings and their potential implications in the development of a vaccine against the HIV virus. A recent report in the Annals of Internal Medicine has shown that a female patient previously infected with HIV was able to remove the…
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Nanoparticle based vaccines: a potentially new addition to the “vaccine menu”?
A versatile and highly effective flu vaccine required in tiny amounts might be just around the corner: too good to be true? Kevin Boyle looks at recent advances. For around 70 years, flu vaccines have mostly been made the same way – using chicken eggs. The virus is injected into the eggs and incubated for…
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Are mRNA vaccines our way out of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Seán Dunphy discusses recent developments in COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccine development is complex and often takes 10 to 15 years of research. With this in mind the scientific response to the Covid-19 pandemic is remarkable. In a single year, 54 Covid-19 vaccines have been brought to human trials, and 13 of these are in the final…
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Africa has eradicated wild polio
There were massive challenges faced during the campaign to eradicate wild polio. To be truly effective, vaccination efforts had to reach far out and potentially dangerous regions, which led to deaths among front-line workers and volunteers. Patients who were hardest to reach were usually those most vulnerable, mostly displaced by conflict. Misinformation was combatted in…
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A coronavirus vaccine is desperately needed, but what are we willing to do to get it?
Tom Edwick dives into the ethics of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development. As we move into month four of lockdown, life as we knew it seems little more than a distant memory. Life in this new covid era has thrown up a lot of fun experiences that I wouldn’t have had to deal with otherwise, like having…
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What makes a vaccine?
In the age of COVID-19, science communication has become more important than ever. In light of what President Trump has postulated in terms of injecting disinfectant as a treatment to the virus and that it is World Immunisation Week, we wanted to take this opportunity to discuss what makes a vaccine. Vaccines are one of…