Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

New Study Says "FluMist" Works... When the Vaccine Does

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

takyon writes:

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This discussion has been archived.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.
New Study Says "FluMist" Works... When the Vaccine Does | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 19 comments | Search Discussion
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @02:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @02:54PM (#388687)

    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.

    That may be how clinical medicine works, but not science. In science you design things so the result of your study is to get an ever closer approximation of reality. The NHST approach to research, used here (and is standard in clinical research), has been well known to automatically lead to apparently conflicting evidence for many, many years. The only reason this pandemic of conflicting evidence isn't more apparent are the institutionalized resistances to replication studies and publishing "negative" results.

    The second interpretation is as follows: In 63% of the studies, the drug had no effect. However, in 37% of the studies, the drug did have an effect. (Moreover, when the drug did have an effect, the effect was quite large, averaging .89.) Research is needed to identify the moderator variables (interactions) that cause the drug to have an effect in some studies but not in others. For example, perhaps the strain of rat used or the mode of injecting the drug affects study outcomes. This interpretation is also completely erroneous. In addition, it leads to wasted research efforts to identify nonexistent moderator variables.

    Both traditional interpretations fail to reveal the true meaning of the studies and hence fail to lead to cumulative knowledge. In fact, the traditional methods based on significance testing make it impossible to reach correct conclusions about the meaning of these studies. This is what is meant by the statement that traditional data analysis methods militate against the development of cumulative knowledge.

    Schmidt, F. L. (1996). Statistical significance testing and cumulative knowledge in psychology: Implications for training of researchers. Psychological Methods, 1, 115– 129. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/met/1/2/115.pdf [apa.org]

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday August 16 2016, @03:42PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @03:42PM (#388697) Homepage

    Protip: the results of studies always represent reality correctly. The problem lies in trying to induct general models from those results.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @04:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @04:30PM (#388711)

      Thanks. I meant to say "models that are ever better approximations of reality".

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday August 16 2016, @05:46PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @05:46PM (#388747)

      > Protip: the results of studies always represent reality correctly.

      They represent the answer to the exact question arising from the setup, which is too often unrelated to the actual intent and/or interpretation.
      Like most computer bugs.