News & Views: Fighting Flu and the Annual Campaign to Immunize
Published on in Vaccine Update for Healthcare Providers
Published on in Vaccine Update for Healthcare Providers
It happens every year like clockwork — influenza disease spreads throughout the country like holiday cheer. And, it is always preceded by the fall push to get one’s entire patient population immunized. Influenza is not unique in its ability to spread, but our efforts to combat it are unique compared with other vaccine-preventable diseases. Collectively, healthcare providers across the country take on this huge initiative to immunize virtually an entire population — only to do it all again 9 to 12 months later. Worse, this massive effort is all to induce a level of protection that is often middling at best. That said, some protection is better than no protection, so we continue to do the best that we can.
Improving influenza vaccines has been difficult because of the nature of influenza viruses. The most troublesome aspect of the virus is its ability to mutate. As influenza replicates, it accumulates genetic mutations that alter the proteins on the surface of the virus rendering immunologic memory partially or completely ineffective. While this level of genetic mutations may seem “sloppy,” it works in favor of the virus’s evolutionary struggle to survive.
A second aspect of the virus that complicates our ability to control it is the fact that influenza viruses can infect across species. When influenza strains originally derived from birds or pigs mutate or combine with human influenza strains, novel influenza viruses are the result. Many of these new viruses will not be robust enough to survive let alone cause disease in humans, but sometimes they can. To see more about this, watch the animation from Hilleman: A Perilous Quest to Save the World’s Children.
Dr. Offit recently discussed the difficulties associated with making an influenza vaccine more extensively in a column for The Daily Beast and in a short video.
A recent commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine addressed influenza vaccine efficacy and garnered media attention due to statements related to vaccine efficacy for the current influenza season. For more information about the article and these statements, read the “In the Journals” article by Dr. Offit.
Because of the need to immunize against influenza annually, many resources exist. Find these tools for specific patient populations:
Contributed by: Charlotte A. Moser, MS, Paul A. Offit, MD
Categories: Vaccine Update December 2017, News and Views About Vaccines
Materials in this section are updated as new information and vaccines become available. The Vaccine Education Center staff regularly reviews materials for accuracy.
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