Hong Kong researchers unveil new therapy to treat swine flu

Aug 26, 2009, 11:19 GMT

   Hong Kong - Scientists in Hong Kong on Wednesday unveiled a new type of therapy that could be used to treat serious cases of swine flu.

   Experts at the University of Hong Kong plan to extract antibodies from people who have recovered from the H1N1 virus to help cure those in intensive care units with the disease.

   Announcing the treatment, Assistant Professor Ivan Hung from the university's faculty of medicine, said the new therapy - the first swine-flu treatment of its kind in the world - would involve two phases.

   In the first phase, people who have recovered from swine flu would be invited to give blood. Their plasma would then be processed into something called a hyperimmune intravenous immunoglobulin. or H-IVIG. which would contain a high concentration of H1N1 antibodies.

   The second phase, would involve using the H-IVIG to treat those in serious condition with swine flu.

   The university said research had shown this type of therapy might have been useful in treating the 1918 flu strain, which is estimated to have killed 50 million to 100 million people.

   Experiments with mice had also shown it to be effective in treating the bird-flu virus H5N1.

   More than 3,000 people have recovered from swine flu in Hong Kong. Four people have died. In the majority of the cases, the illness has been mild.

   However experts all over the world fear that a second wave, expected in the coming winter months, would be much more severe and have a much higher death toll.

   There are also concerns about the virus becoming resistant to some of the anti-viral drugs currently being used to treat it, which is why researchers are looking into alternative methods of treating the disease.

   Hung said his team hoped to collect around 420 litres of blood plasma in phase one, which would provide enough H-IVIG to treat around 63 seriously ill patients.

   'By using the antibodies, they [doctors] will be able to cure the virus ... and hopefully speed up the recovery of these patients,' he said.