Flu vaccine goes five times further

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

This post does not replace your local policy and procedure recommendation on administration of flu vaccine - I post it here as interesting information only.

Flu vaccine goes five times further

18:01 04 November 04 NewScientist.com news service A fifth of the usual dose of flu vaccine can elicit just as much protection against influenza as the usual jab as long as it is put into skin and not into muscle, two separate studies have found.

That could make flu vaccine go five times farther in an emergency. The discovery would have been even more helpful, had it been made earlier. It might then have been possible to implement a new vaccine delivery scheme for the US this winter, as recent manufacturing problems have cut the supply of flu vaccine to about half the level of demand.

But it may be even more important for the next flu pandemic. On 11 November the world's 16 biggest vaccine manufacturers will meet at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, alongside government funding agencies to discuss how best to boost vaccine production in the event of a pandemic.

Intradermal injection - into the skin - is already used for the anti-TB vaccine BCG. As the primary barrier between the body and the outside world, the skin is swarming with white blood cells called dendritic cells. These present foreign proteins to the rest of the immune system, which provokes an immune response which is then remembered by the body. This should make the skin an ideal spot for immunisation.

Deep injections

But skin holds a smaller volume of injected fluid than muscle. In the 1970s, investigators decided that maximum protection from influenza required a 0.5 millilitre dose, which needed deep, intramuscular injection. The two new studies compare standard flu vaccination with the injection of 0.1 ml intradermally.

Robert Belshe and colleagues at Saint Louis University, US, studied a new intradermal flu vaccine being developed by the pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, which delivers 40% of the standard intramuscular dose of flu protein.

Richard Kenny and colleagues at Iomai, a vaccine R&D company in Gaithersberg, Maryland, compared different volumes and routes of administration with a standard flu vaccine. They injected only a fifth as much flu protein as found in a normal dose.

More here http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996623

[James Huffman]

What I find interesting is how this crisis has brought about research, innovations, and findings such as the above. Such things wouldn't have been discovered if we hadn't had a shortage. This doesn't lessen the impact of the shortage on people, but does show how good can come out of a problem like this.

I continue to chronicle information about the current flu season and the impact of the vaccine shortage with daily updates on my blog.

Jim Huffman

[SmilingBluEyes]

What's that they say about Necessity being the Mother of Invention?