Finnish study examines effect of trivalent inactivated vaccine in children aged 9 months to 3 years
TUESDAY, Nov. 30 (HealthDay News) -- Trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine appears effective in young children, even those under the age of 2, according to research published online Nov. 23 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Santtu Heinonen, M.D., of the Turku University Hospital in Finland, and colleagues analyzed data from 631 children, aged 9 to 40 months. The researchers examined the children each time they had a fever or evidence of a respiratory infection during the 2007 to 2008 flu season. One hundred fifty-four were fully vaccinated, 21 were partly vaccinated, and 456 were unvaccinated.
The researchers found that 5 percent of fully vaccinated children and 13 percent of unvaccinated children developed influenza, for an effectiveness of 66 percent. Among children under 2, 4 percent of fully vaccinated children contracted flu, compared to 12 percent of unvaccinated children.
"Our findings show that trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine effectively prevents symptomatic laboratory-confirmed influenza in children aged 9 months to 3 years. Furthermore, our study provides clear evidence of the effectiveness of the vaccine in children younger than 2 years. These findings are clinically important because the burden of influenza is particularly high among the youngest children, and hence both the need for and the benefit from an effective vaccine would be greatest in this age group," the authors write.
F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. provided funding for the study. A co-author disclosed financial relationships with several pharmaceutical companies.
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