Caution raised over SARS vaccine

Helen Pearson

Nature (2005)Cite this article

Jab against one strain might worsen infection with others.

Vaccinating against one strain of SARS might aggravate infection with other strains. Credit: © Punchstock

A cautionary note has been sounded for those developing vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Some vaccines could prove useless against certain strains, or even worsen the infection, a preliminary study suggests.

SARS killed nearly 800 people when it emerged from China in 2002 and spread around the world in the first half of 2003. Only a handful of isolated outbreaks have been spotted since that initial epidemic.

Aware that the disease could re-emerge, several groups have been trying to make a vaccine against the virus. They are mainly trying to find ways to expose people to a protein on the virus’s coat, called the spike protein, which helps it to enter cells. This should jolt the immune system into recognizing the virus during a future infection and making antibodies that attack it.

In the new study, Gary Nabel of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, and his co-workers injected mice with spike protein from a SARS virus taken from a human patient infected in early 2003. They then collected the antibodies the animals produced.