Better Way To Beat The Flu

Researchers at Tulane University's School of Medicine want you and me to have a quiet and comfortable flu season. In fact, if it were up to them, they'd really like to get rid of the flu bug once and for all. The eradication of the flu virus may be a long time coming but a better vaccine, that's being worked on right now at Tulane thanks to $1.6 million grant.

Dr. Elizabeth Norton told the Louisiana Radio Network the goal of the research being done at Tulane in conjunction with this grant is to make a better vaccine for everyone.

Make the immune system recognize the flu vaccine as being a danger signal and make an effective memory response against it so that when you get sick, even if you have an underlying disease, you are protected from the infection.

The grant from the National Institutes for Health should fund research at the university until the year 2020. Statistics show there is certainly a need for a better vaccine with nearly four thousand deaths attributed annually to the flu virus.

So we’d like to get all of those numbers down and take the percentage of people who are getting infected by the flu each year down from 10% or 20%, down to 0% or 1%.

If that could happen can you imagine the amount of time and money people like you and I would save over the course of the cold and flu season? I think I'd be money ahead just on tissue and Nyquil.