Doctors Recommend A New Type Of Flu Vaccine

Doctors Recommend A New Type Of Flu Vaccine.
A vaccine that protects children against four strains of flu may be more basic than the usual three-strain vaccine, a supplemental meditate on suggests. The four-strain (or misdesignated "quadrivalent") vaccine is close by as a nasal spray or an injection for the first span this flu season. The injected version, however, may be in direct supply, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention click. The look at of about 200 children did not compare the four-strain vaccine to the historic three-strain vaccine.

Rather, it looked at how kids responded either to the four-strain vaccine or a hepatitis A vaccine, and then compared reply rates for the four-strain flu vaccine to effect rates for the three-strain vaccine from stand up year's flu season. "This is the commencement large, randomized, controlled trial to demonstrate the efficacy of a quadrivalent flu vaccine against influenza in children," said scan co-author Dr Ghassan Dbaibo.

"The results showed that, by preventing middling to stony influenza, vaccination achieved reductions of 61 percent to 77 percent in doctors' visits, hospitalizations, absences from primary and parental absences from work," said Dbaibo, at the worry of pediatrics and teeny-bopper medicine at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, in Lebanon. The results guarantee the effectiveness of the vaccine against influenza, and unusually against moderate to onerous influenza.

"They also showed an 80 percent reduction in lower respiratory area infections, which is the most common serious outcome of influenza. Therefore, vaccination of children in this grow old group can help to reduce the significant weight placed on parents, doctors and hospitals every flu season. The announce was published online Dec 11, 2013 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The investigation was funded by GlaxoSmithKline, maker of the four-strain vaccine in use in the study. Dr Lisa Grohskopf, a medical police officer in CDC's influenza division, said there are several flu vaccine options for children. For children grey 2 and up, a nasal sprayer is an option, and for children under 2, the usual injection is available. "The nasal spindrift vaccine is a quadrivalent vaccine, which has four assorted flu viruses in it.

That's to snowball the likelihood of whatever might be circulating during the season". The flu marksman is available with either three or four virus strains. "Since quadrivalent vaccines are revitalized this year, there's not as much of them being produced as trivalent vaccines - for the flu shots - so there may be places where it's harder to get the quadrivalent vaccine".

The four-strain vaccine may expense a seldom more than the trivalent three-strain vaccine, but charge will veer by location. And the vaccine is covered by insurance. According to the CDC, 138 million to 145 million doses of flu vaccine will be within reach this year. An estimated 30 million to 32 million of these doses will be the four-strain flu vaccine. The stay will be the three-strain vaccine.

The three-strain vaccine protects against two types of influenza A - H1N1 and H3N2 - and one B strain. The four-strain vaccine adds another B strain. Grohskopf said, because of the pinched fund of the four-strain vaccine, the CDC is not recommending one vaccine over another. "The most worthy whosis is that kids get a flu vaccine, even if it's the older trivalent one.

Two doses of vaccine are recommended for children 6 months to 2 years of epoch who are getting vaccinated for the head time. "They emergency to get those doses before flu time is honestly in rich swing. The effectiveness of the vaccine depends on how well it is matched to the circulating viruses. And it's still too antediluvian in the flu occasion to express just how effective either vaccine will be.

For the study, Dbaibo and colleagues assigned 62 children old 3 to 8 to take the four-strain vaccine and 148 to away with a hepatitis A vaccine. They found, among the children exposed to the flu, 16 of those who received the four-strain flu vaccine got sick, compared with 61 of those who got the hepatitis A vaccine. These numbers evince the vaccine was 74 percent operative in preventing flu.

In contrast, termination year's flu vaccine, which contained three strains of flu, was 56 percent effective, according to the CDC. In the changed study, airs clobber were alike in both the flu and hepatitis A groups. Serious unimportant effects occurred in 1,4 percent of those who received the flu vaccine and in 0,9 percent of those who received the hepatitis A vaccine. The most dangerous pretension effects were one case of bronchitis and a dispute of convulsions in the flu vaccine group view. More poop To learn more about flu, visit the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.