LSU researchers focus on infectious-disease fight

• By SANDY DAVIS
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: May 16, 2009 - Page: 1A

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Gus Kousoulas is quick to tell a visitor that LSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine is not just about treating a sick dog or horse — it’s also about finding treatments for infectious diseases in humans, including swine flu.

The School of Veterinary Medicine created the Division of Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine — BIOMMED —  eight years ago to do that research, said Kousoulas, BIOMMED director.

“We’re a bona fide research center with a primary focus on infectious diseases,” he said. “We’re at the forefront of endemic diseases here.”

A lot of the infectious diseases they study are ones that an animal transmits to a human, such as swine flu, West Nile virus and Lyme disease.

Most recently, the center’s researchers focused on the H1N1 virus that recently threatened to become a pandemic.

“The reality is we cannot respond fast enough by getting a vaccine out there. It takes at least six months for that to happen,” Kousoulas said.

The problem with flu viruses, Kousoulas said, is they can change very quickly.

“If the avian flu and human flu infect a pig, the pig becomes a mixing vessel. The viruses mix in the pig, and a new virus comes out,” he said. “Because it changes so fast, it is highly possible that a new virus evolves that is highly virulent in humans.”

Companies that produce vaccines are now faced with a dilemma: should they produce vaccines for seasonal flu, swine flu or both, Kousoulas said.

“If we produce both vaccines, then we will have to produce much less of each, which means not everybody could be immunized,” he said.

Another fear is that swine flu will mutate so much that the new vaccine would be useless by fall, Kousoulas said.

“We’re really helpless in all of this,” he said. “We can only contain it partially through antiviral medicines and vaccines.”

There are only two antiviral medications on the market that work — Tamiflu and Relenza, Kousoulas said.