Science Media Centre

District Health Boards are urging people to get the seasonal influenza vaccine as the flu season kicks off and hospitals are already overflowing from a particularly busy summer season. Waikato Hospital’s Emergency Department has had a particularly busy summer season, with clinical nurse director Mary-Anne Spence saying the number of people presenting to ED in […]

PHARMAC has announced it will fund this year’s seasonal influenza vaccine that covers four strains of the flu. Following reports from the Northern Hemisphere that the latest season’s vaccine was not as effective as expected, the SMC prepared a Q&A with influenza and immunisation experts ahead of the vaccine being made available here. Feel free […]

A mumps outbreak in Auckland has hit 300 cases this year, more than the last 16 years combined, due in part to a large cohort of unvaccinated young people. The Auckland Public Regional Health Service released updated numbers on the outbreak on Tuesday, saying a ‘lost generation’ of young people faced a triple threat of […]

Researchers at the University of Auckland have found a vaccine used to protect Kiwis against Meningococcal B also provides some protection against gonorrhoea. Lead researcher Dr Helen Petousis-Harris presented the findings at a conference in England over the weekend. Though gonorrhoea is a major public health challenge, there has been little progress in developing a vaccine. […]

New Zealand scientists are preparing to move to human clinical trials on a vaccine they hope will aid in the treatment of bowel cancer. The University of Otago researchers studying a potential vaccine for colorectal cancer presented their findings at a Melbourne conference this week. PhD candidate Braeden Donaldson said the vaccine worked differently from […]

New international research indicates that just one dose of the Cervarix HPV vaccine – currently unavailable in New Zealand – could prevent the majority of cervical cancers. UPDATE: New comment below. Vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) can protect against infection and the risk of developing cervical cancer and a range of other HPV related diseases […]

The pharmaceuticals company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has said that its potential Ebola vaccine isn’t likely to be ready until late 2015. GSK is one of several companies trying to fast-track a vaccine to prevent the spread of Ebola in West Africa, compressing trials that would normally take up to 10 years into just 12 months. According to GSK’s press […]

Dominion Post reporter Nikki MacDonald interviews the Wellington scientists who have found, and patented, a new vaccine for asthma. The research – a collaboration between the Malaghan Institute and Victoria University’s Ferrier Research Institute – was published today in Nature Chemical Biology and shows that the vaccine prevents inflammation of the lungs and airways in mice. If successful in humans, the […]

New Kiwi research has demonstrated the potential of an oral vaccine for tuberculosis. In a study published this week in the open access journal PLoS ONE, researchers from the tested an oral formulation of the current tuberculosis (TB) vaccine in mice and found that it worked better than the standard injected vaccine in immunising against […]

Claims that an influenza epidemic of swine flu proportions are set to overwhelm the country are overblown, according to virologists at the National Influenza Centre.  Media reports that a ‘new strain’ of influenza — H3N2 — causing hallucinations and crippling nausea, is heading north from Canterbury, and that flu admissions are at ‘epidemic’ levels, are […]