Children who are given the FluMist nasal vaccine are 55 percent less likely to succumb to the flu than those who get the shot, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine today.
Funded by Gaithersburg?s MedImmune ? the maker of FluMist ? the St. Louis University study enlisted 8,475 children ages 6 months to 5 years in 16 countries.
“The reason we believe this happens is this vaccine is designed as a live, weakened virus, delivered right into the sinus membranes,” said Dr. Frank Malinoski, senior vice president for health and science for MedImmune. “That induces an immune response right there at the first potential for an attack.”
Traditional vaccines use fragments of viruses that have been destroyed, and do not present as complete a “mug shot” for the body?s immune detectives to look out for, he said.
FluMist was previously approved only for children over 5 years old, but MedImmune is waiting for approval for children as young as 12 months, Malinoski said.
“Children get the flu twice as often as adults,” Dr. Robert Belshe, a vaccine researcher at St. Louis University School of Medicine and the lead author of the study said in a statement. “It?s important to vaccinate kids against influenza ? and to identify new and more effective flu vaccine options ? because kids have a higher attack rate for influenza infection than adults. And children, when they bring the illness home, tend to pass it on to adults in their household.”
Traditional flu shots and FluMist stimulate different types of immune responses, Belshe said. The shot stimulates antibodies in the blood, but the spray stimulates antibodies in the nose as well, and may stimulate a cellular immune response as well.
Researchers also found children 12 months and older tolerated the spray well, except for those with asthma or a history of wheezing, according to the study. Children under 12 months and those with wheezing had a higher rate of hospitalization for flu and other causes in the six months following vaccination.
Those who responded well to the treatment also had fewer instances of ear infections and were able to resist more strains of influenza than just those incorporated in the vaccine, Malinoski said.
