Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday August 16 2016, @07:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the live-and-let-live? dept.

A new study has found that the FluMist nasal delivery system is just as reliable as other forms of a vaccine:

It came as a surprise this June when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended against using the nasal flu vaccine for the 2016-2017 flu season, citing a lack of evidence that it works. Now, findings from a Canadian study [DOI: 10.7326/M16-0513] appear at first blush to contradict the research that led the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices [ACIP] to recommend against that live attenuated vaccine.

But things aren't so simple. In fact, the conflicting evidence about the live nasal flu vaccine offers an excellent case study on how complex the task of analyzing flu vaccine data and making recommendations really is. "Sometimes the public wants a very simple message, and unfortunately life's not like that," Mark Loeb, the new study's lead author and director of the division of infectious diseases at McMaster University in Ontario, tells Shots. "Things change as the evidence grows and we understand more. Unfortunately, that's how science and clinical medicine work. The challenge is to be able to help the public understand the shades of gray here."

[...] CDC data consistently showed the live nasal vaccine to be very effective in children until 2013, when the vaccine went from including three strains (trivalent) to including four strains (quadrivalent). And therein lies the rub: The new Canadian study used the trivalent vaccine, while ACIP analyzed data using the quadrivalent vaccine, and among U.S. children. "Many of us felt very strongly that the LAIV [live attenuated influenza vaccine] was a better vaccine than the inactivated for children, and the data supported that," says Pedro Piedra, a professor of virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine and one of the investigators involved in the nasal vaccine clinical trials in the late 1980s. "But something happened when it became a quadrivalent vaccine."

Previously: CDC Advisory Panel Recommends Against "FluMist" Nasal Spray Vaccine System


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday August 16 2016, @09:59PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @09:59PM (#388858) Journal

    Some polio vaccines prepared from 1954 to 1961 were contaminated with infectious SV40.

    -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16288015 [nih.gov]

    Studies in the 1960s showed that SV40 could produce certain cancers in newborn hamsters. More recent studies reported finding SV40 genes in several types of human tumors. These findings have raised the question of whether SV40 may cause, or contribute to causing, some types of cancer in humans. Several epidemiological studies found no link between exposure to SV40 contaminated vaccines and development of cancer. However, a study of immunization of pregnant women showed an increase in certain cancers in the offspring of women immunized with IPV compared to women immunized with either OPV or influenza vaccine. However, a recent report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that "the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between SV40 containing polio vaccines and cancer."

    -- William Egan, Ph.D., Acting Director, Office of Vaccine Research and Review, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration on Hearing: SV40 in Polio Vaccine before the Subcommittee on Wellness and Human Rights, Committee on Government Reform, US House of Representatives, November 13, 2003 http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t031113.html [hhs.gov]

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2