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WASHINGTON — A unique study suggests there may be a way to kick-start people's protection against bird flu just in case it triggers a worldwide outbreak years from now.

If a flu pandemic began, it would take several months to tailor a vaccine to the precise strain causing illness and then to make enough vaccine for every American. Worse, people almost certainly will require two doses to protect against a flu strain their bodies have never before encountered.

Scientists have long wondered if giving shots in advance might help - a vaccine that wouldn't fully protect but would introduce people's immune systems to a brand-new type of flu. Then, once a pandemic began, they'd need only one booster shot of vaccine tailored to the exact strain, significantly cutting the time it would take to protect a population.

On Friday, University of Rochester scientists reported the first evidence that this "prime-and-boost" method could work.

If the findings hold up, they raise the possibility of giving "priming" shots to doctors, nurses and other first-responders who would be on the front lines of a flu pandemic long before much vaccine was ready - or maybe even offering such shots to whoever wanted them.

"You'd have people who were prepared as much as possible in advance," said John Treanor, a Rochester vaccine specialist who led the research. "It is something a lot of people are very, very interested in. It does have some major implications for policy."

The researchers tracked down 37 people who had tested an experimental bird flu vaccine back in 1998. At the end of 2005, each got a single booster shot designed to fight a different strain of the H5N1 virus.

H5N1 is thought to have made its first jump from poultry into people in Hong Kong in 1997. The Rochester volunteers got their first inoculations with vaccine made from that Hong Kong strain.

But the deadly Asian bird flu has continued evolving as it hop-scotched across the globe - and the booster doses were made from a very different strain that emerged in Vietnam in 2004. The booster recipients were compared with people vaccinated for the first time against the Vietnam strain.

The booster method worked better, Treanor reported.