Flu season typically lasts from December to March, but the ideal time for “high-risk” people to be inoculated with the flu vaccine is now through mid-November, says Dr. James Luby, an infectious disease expert at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Although vaccine shortages have been experienced in the past, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting no short supplies this season.
New data released today demonstrate significantly better immune responses in the age range 65 and above when vaccinated with GSK?s new generation (adjuvanted) seasonal flu vaccine compared to a traditional seasonal flu vaccine. These new data are highly important, since the disease burden and death toll is highest among the elderly in each flu season. The data, presented at the Influenza Vaccines for the World (IVW) 2006 Congress, showed the seroprotection rate (90.5%) achieved by the new adjuvanted vaccine in the elderly to be more than 25% higher than that reported in the age matched comparator group.
GlaxoSmithKline (plc) today announced that a supply contract has been signed by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health and GlaxoSmithKline for 8 million doses of GSK?s H5N1 antigen influenza vaccine and its proprietary adjuvant for pre-pandemic use. The order provides enough doses, one per head of the entire Swiss population, to help prepare the immune system against the threat of a human influenza pandemic and is the first national programme to do so. Supply and stockpiling of the pre-pandemic vaccine is expected in early 2007 once the Swiss regulatory agency, Swissmedic, has reviewed and approved GSK?s regulatory file.
A fast, sensitive and inexpensive diagnostic tool called MassTag PCR has been developed that can identify the specific pathogen that causes a particular case of respiratory infection, according to a new study funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The research team ? headed by scientists in the Jerome L. and Dawn Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and their colleagues at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health ? used MassTag PCR to identify previously undiagnosed pathogens that caused influenza-like illnesses in New York State during the winter of 2004.
A novel way of slowing down the rate at which a flu virus infects the body could well become an effective protector from all types of influenza, even pandemics, say researchers from the University of Warwick, UK. Animal studies have shown this procedure protects against a wide range of influenza viruses.
1. – Influenza: acrid, burning coryza, nose stopped up at night, must breathe through the mouth, hoarseness, dry cough, oppressed breathing.
1. – Influenza; acrid, watery coryza, corroding the lips sore throat, hoarseness with rawness and burning in the larynx; dry tickling cough.
1. – Fluent coryza, with rawness and smarting in the nostrils.
Indicated in malarial conditions and fevers, chiefly intermittent fever; also in influenza. The severe aching in the (long) bones and the thirst are characteristic.
Influenza experts have urged nations not to lower their guard against the deadly H5N1 virus, saying it now survives longer in higher summer temperatures.