TO FIGHT DISEASE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4912, 7 December 1925, Page 1

TO FIGHT DISEASE.

NOSE VACCINE FOR COLDS.

PROTECTION AGAINST INFLUENZA

The possibility .that by applying an appropriate vaccine to the lining membrane of the nose we may be Able in the near future to obtain protection against colds, influenza, and other inhaled diseases, is foreshadowed in a report to the Medical Research Council, on his inquiry into the virus of cow-poix and smallpox by Dr. Mervyn Gordon, consulting bacteriologist to St. Bartholomeus Hospital London. 1

To deal with big outbreaks of these diseases it is desirable .that an efficacious method less troublesome than inoculation should be discovered. Having found that the virus of cowpox heated to 55 degrees Centigrade and injected under the s|kin of a rabbit produced immunity (protection against infection), Dr. Gordon applied the same dose to the mucous lining of the rabbit’s nose and produced equal protection. He writes :

“Further experiments are desirable to determine the extent to which this physiological property of the nas,al mucosa can be exploited for the practical production of immunity. “Since all that is required is the mere application of the antigen (microbic. substance) to the nasal mucosa, it is conceivable that ultimately immunisation by the nasal route may. be ' found .to possess a high value in the case of threatened epidemics of respiratory-borne diseases, a contingency in whicn preventive medicine is at present gravely at fault. “As in such infectious maladies the virus is air-borhe, the nasal mucosa is the surface of the body most exposed to attack. This site would appear to be the outpost where specific immunisation is most needed and most likely to prove successful in checking the spread of such inhaled infection.”

The resjults of the investigations give promise of a practical inode of preventing not only cow-pox, but 'also smallpox, colds, influenza, measles, and other diseases due to filter-pass-ing microbes.

In the'introduction, to the report Medical Research Council points l out that the problem of filter-passers is. one of the most important of the time. Accordingly advanaes in methods of investigating themr—which Dr. Gordon’s investigation promises—will be particularly welcome.

An immediate application fe the discovery of ; a means of diagnosing smallpox with certainty and distinguishing it from chicken-pox. While the rabbit serum prepared against cow-pox will aggutinate equally well the virus of smallpox, it does not agglutinate a similar suspension containing the virus of chicken-pox.

From other evidence described in the report .there is ground for hoping that before long it may be possible to prepare an effective serum for the treatment of smallpox.