In the fight against common childhood illnesses, scientists have turned to an unusual source: the blood of paediatricians. It turns out this is a treasure trove of powerful antibodies that could be used as preventative treatments. These have even outperformed approved antibody therapies against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and a common cold virus.

Paediatricians are almost constantly exposed to respiratory viruses, making them a potentially underexplored resource in the hunt for highly potent antibodies against such pathogens. Although antibody therapies are available for preventing infections like RSV – which infects almost every child by the age of 2 and can trigger severe breathing difficulties – they only neutralise some strains. But a broader-acting treatment could now be on the cards.

A team including Hui Zhai at the Children’s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University screened the blood of 10 paediatricians who had been working at the hospital for over a decade. From this, the researchers discovered 56 potent antibodies against RSV from the paediatricians’ immune cells.

The researchers then generated artificial versions of these antibodies and tested them in the lab, finding that three were particularly active against a diverse range of RSV strains. One of the three also neutralised human metapneumovirus, which belongs to the same virus family as RSV and is a common cause of colds, but can also lead to severe illness in some children.

Subsequent tests in mice and rats showed that injections of these three paediatrician-derived antibodies, either on their own or in combination, stopped the animals from developing symptoms when they were infected with RSV or human metapneumovirus. In fact, the paediatrician antibodies were up to 25 times better at blocking RSV than existing antibodies called nirsevimab and clesrovimab, and they neutralised a wider range of strains.

This makes sense because it is common lore among paediatricians that they become increasingly resilient to respiratory viruses over the course of their careers, says at Port Macquarie Base Hospital in Australia. “I’ve been working with paediatric patients for 10 years now and in my first few years, I would probably get two to three notable respiratory illnesses per year, and now I can go a year without getting any.”

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Calcutt believes the paediatrician-derived antibodies appear promising enough to warrant further testing in human clinical trials. “There are certainly stranger interventions out there, so I think this one is worth considering,” he says.

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Currently, there are two ways to protect infants from RSV. One is to administer a vaccine during pregnancy, which protects babies once they are born. The other is to give them an injection of nirsevimab or clesrovimab, which neutralise the virus if a child catches it, thereby helping to prevent severe symptoms. But these only work against some RSV strains.

Nirsevimab and clesrovimab were similarly developed by screening the blood of adults who had previously been infected with RSV, but who didn’t work in healthcare. This identified antibodies that the individuals’ immune systems had naturally produced against the virus. There is no approved vaccine or antibody therapy for human metapneumovirus.

The Black Death, a bubonic plague outbreak that killed up to 60 per cent of the population of medieval Europe, may have been set in motion by volcanic activity around 1345.

The plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, is spread by fleas feeding on rodents and then carried to humans bitten by infected fleas. It is unclear what led to the 14th-century outbreak in Europe, but historical sources suggest that the transport of grain from the Black Sea to Italy may have played a role.

“The Black Death is a central event of the Middle Ages and I wanted to understand why such an extraordinary amount of grain had to be brought to Italy specifically in 1347,” says at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Germany.

To investigate, Bauch and his colleague at the University of Cambridge reviewed evidence about the climate from tree ring data, ice cores and written accounts.

Observers in Japan, China, Germany, France and Italy all independently reported reduced sunshine and increased cloudiness between 1345 and 1349. This was probably the result of a sulphur-rich volcanic eruption – or several eruptions – in an unknown tropical location, Bauch and Büntgen suggest.

Ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic, along with thousands of tree ring timber samples collected across eight different European regions, also suggest a dramatic climate event may have happened.

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What’s more, the researchers found official records showing that, facing famine caused by the cold weather and failing crops, Italian authorities implemented an emergency plan to import grain from the Mongols of the Golden Horde around the Sea of Azov in 1347.

“They acted in a highly professional, rational and efficient manner and achieved their goal to alleviate high prices and impending famine through grain imports before starvation deaths could occur,” says Bauch. “Precisely because these societies practised excellent famine prevention, the plague bacterium arrived in Italy as a stowaway, carried in with the grain.”

At the time, the cause of plague wasn’t known and the outbreak was blamed on things such as “astral constellations and toxic vapours released into the atmosphere by earthquakes”, he says.

While the plague may have reached Europe eventually anyway, perhaps the population losses would have been smaller if this emergency response hadn’t occurred, says Bauch. “My argument is not against preparedness, but rather for an awareness that effective precautionary measures in one sphere can create problems in unexpected areas.”

at the Australian National University in Canberra says it is likely that “a perfect storm of factors” led to the Black Death entering Europe. “Rising food prices, the widespread famine documented, together with the cold, wet weather, may have resulted in reduced immunity due to inadequate nutrition, and induced behaviour change such as spending more time indoors near others for extended periods,” she says.

However, more work will be required to untangle causation from correlation, she says. “The short-term perturbations caused by the eruptions appear to have had considerable impact on local weather patterns as documented, but whether they were the cause of the Black Death entering Europe, as stated, requires more evidence,” says Lal.

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An early trial of a norovirus vaccine pill has shown promise at protecting against the notorious “winter vomiting” bug, with researchers saying it could potentially be available for use in a few years.

The virus is highly contagious, infecting the stomach and intestines and causing . Most people recover within a few days, but very young and older people are especially at risk of ending up in hospital, with significant healthcare costs. “Just in the US alone, it’s a 10 billion-[dollar]-a-year problem,” says at biotech company Vaxart in San Francisco, California.

This has spurred scientists to develop a vaccine, but so far, efforts have failed. That is partly because prior attempts have focused on developing injectable vaccines, which are less good at generating protective antibodies in the intestine, where the virus replicates, says Tucker.

To address this, Tucker and his colleagues that delivers a protein from the GI.1 norovirus variant into the intestine. An initial trial in adults under 50 found that the pill could generate norovirus-specific antibodies in their guts, but people in this age group probably wouldn’t be a priority for a vaccine given that they generally recover from the virus easily.

Now, the researchers have tested the vaccine in people in the US aged between 55 and 80. The team gave 11 of them the pill while 22 others took a placebo. About a month later, the researchers collected blood and saliva samples from the participants.

They found the people who took the vaccine had higher levels of IgA antibodies, which can block norovirus from entering cells. These antibodies had increased by more than 10 times in their blood and around seven times in their saliva, compared with samples taken just before vaccination. In contrast, the placebo group saw little change in antibody levels.

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Importantly, the antibodies were still present six months later in the people who took the pill, albeit at lower levels, suggesting it could offer lasting immunity. “The fact that they’ve got this robust antibody response makes me hopeful that it could provide protection [against infection],” says at Cornell University in New York. “In particular, the saliva antibody response is a way we can get a snapshot of what’s happening in the intestine – because the immune responses there are similar,” she says.

But further work should explore whether the vaccine actually prevents infection or reduces the spread of norovirus, she says. The team hopes to explore this.

What’s more, the study focused on just one norovirus variant. “In the real world, there are dozens of different strains you might encounter – the vaccine may not protect against them all,” says Caddy. In unpublished work, the researchers found that a version of the vaccine containing both GI.1 and GII.4 norovirus variants – the latter of which is currently surging in the UK – generated antibodies against multiple variants, says Tucker.

This suggests we might soon have a norovirus vaccine, says Tucker. “If everything went smoothly, with no funding hiccups, a vaccine might be available in a couple of years,” he says.