Word: seconds
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...better than responses to seasonal flu vaccines of past years," says Terry Nolan of the University of Melbourne, the lead author of the study. That's good news for parents and public health officials, particularly in light of the fact that about half of U.S. children never get their second dose of seasonal flu vaccine. (See how not to get the H1N1...
...involved 370 healthy children ages six months to nine years in Australia, researchers immunized half of the group with two doses of vaccine, each containing 15 micrograms (mcg) of the virus antigen. The other half received two doses containing 30 mcg of the antigen each. In both cases, the second dose was given 21 days after the first. The researchers found that 21 days after receiving only one shot, 92.5% of children in the 15-mcg-dose group and 98% of those receiving the higher dose had generated sufficient antibodies against H1N1...
...until then, neither Nolan nor officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are ready to ditch the second dose. For one thing, they note, the level of antibodies does not always translate to actual protection against the flu. "Lab studies are a proxy and work well," says Dr. Anthony Fiore, at the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "But until you can show that a single dose is as effective as two, it's probably too soon to pull away from...
Such data will be available only after the flu season ends next spring, at which point researchers can study hospital records of children who were treated for H1N1 infection. Only then can they compare those who received both doses of the vaccine to those who missed their second shot, and see if one or the other group was more likely to come down with...
...cautious about the Australian data, says Fiore, is that the youngsters in the study were all healthy, with normal immune systems. But those who are most vulnerable to influenza are children with underlying conditions such as asthma or diabetes, who may need the added boost from a second dose to protect them from complications of the flu. He notes also that previous studies of other H1N1 vaccines showed slightly weaker antibody responses in children after a single dose than the Australian shot, which suggests one dose may not be enough to effectively combat influenza in youngsters...