Repurposed epilepsy drug could be used to boost vaccine protection among elderly

Article excerpt

A drug commonly used to treat epilepsy could be repurposed to significantly boost the response to vaccines in humans, helping protect those for whom the vaccine is less effective, such as older adults or immunocompromised people. A Cambridge-led team showed that the drug more than doubled the number of antibodies against flu and increased 10-fold the number of flu-specific CD8 T cells, a type of white blood cell that kills cells infected by flu.