Experimental Vaccine For Stomach Flu Might Work

Dec 8, 2011
Originally published on December 8, 2011 11:15 am


The obnoxious virus causes the euphemistically-named stomach flu and is one of the most common foodborne illnesses. If you catch it, there's no drug to make you better. You pretty much have to ride out the diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain for a few days.

For now the best way to prevent the illness is with good hygiene. Even then, the highly contagious virus is hard to contain. So there's growing interest in a vaccine.





The result come with some caveats. The vaccine didn't lead to as strong an immune response as a natural infection. It's also not clear how long a vaccine's protection would last. And there are lots of different noroviruses, so a vaccine won't really be ready for prime time until it can tackle several of those at the same time.

Still, the researchers conclude, the study "shows that it may be possible to use a vaccination strategy to prevent norovirus disease."

