Spring-Fall Flu Shots May Protect Toddlers
Combining Vaccine With Routine Visits Could Also Help Harried Parents
Oct. 4, 2004 (Boston) -- Here's a potential shot in the arm for efforts to improve flu vaccine coverage of toddlers: New studies show that kids who are given one dose of flu vaccine in the spring and a second one in the fall appear to get the same protection from the flu as children who receive the standard two doses given one month apart in the fall.
The CDC recommends that all children between the ages of 6 months and 2 years be immunized against the flu (the vaccine is not approved for newborns). The CDC also recommends that all children younger than 9 years old who are being vaccinated against flu for the first time receive two doses, because the immune system is primed for action by the first dose, but requires a second dose in order to mount a strong defense against infection with the flu virus.
Splitting the doses into spring and fall would be more convenient for parents, because they could have the kids vaccinated during regular six-month checkups, when they receive a raft of vaccinations against other childhood diseases anyway.
But because influenza is infamous for being a viral quick-change artist, there is some question whether a spring-fall vaccine schedule would adequately protect children from the current year's flu strain.
The flu virus is extremely adept at [changing], allowing new strains of the virus to crop up nearly every year. This means that scientists who develop the vaccine must make educated guesses about what to put into each year's version of the vaccine to protect people against the virus types that are likely to be circulating that year.
By a quirk of fate however, researcher Kathleen Neuzil and colleagues from University of Washington and Duke, planned and implemented a study testing the spring-fall schedule versus the standard schedule during one of those rare periods when the flu vaccine stayed the same from one year to the next.
2nd Shot Still Strong in the Fall
In the study, the researchers gave the flu vaccine on a spring-fall schedule to 114 toddlers, and in two fall doses one month apart to 145 others. They took blood samples before and after the second vaccination to see how well the immune systems of the children were responding to the vaccines. The flu vaccine uses an inactivated form of the virus to stimulate the immune system into attacking when it encounters the real thing.