# 3651
Today we are learning of a new study recommending a different vaccination strategy, one that would focus on what they believe are the biggest spreaders of flu - school-aged children and their parents – instead of the groups recommended by the ACIP committee late last month.
We’ve several takes on this study, along with a press release.
First Nature.com has an overview by Elie Dolgin.
Flu shot guidelines criticized
Mathematical model suggests that US experts got their priorities wrong.
Elie Dolgin
The US policy for which groups should be the first to receive influenza vaccines is not the most effective strategy to limit the spread of swine flu, according to a paper published online today in Science1.
Last month, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel recommended that young people aged from 6 months to 24 years old should be placed at the front of the queue for flu jabs. But a new mathematical model shows that very young children do not contribute greatly to transmission, and priority should be given to school-aged kids, the number one cohort of disease spreaders, as well as their parents, who serve as gateways to the rest of the population.
"Those vaccines could be better used in older kids and the parents of older kids," says Jan Medlock, a mathematical biologist at Clemson University in South Carolina, and an author of the study. "Contacts go way up once kids reach five and go to school and are in the big pool with the big kids."
Other articles on this study include:
Vaccinate all students, parents against H1N1, skip most adults: study - Ottawa Citizen
Flu Shot Plan Challenged by Study Favoring School Kids, Parents – Bloomberg News
First for Swine Flu Shots: Most Likely to Die, or to Spread It? – Time Magazine
And this press release from Yale University.
Yale researcher questions federal guidelines for seasonal and swine flu vaccines
New Haven, Conn. —With the seasonal flu season approaching and uncertainty over whether swine flu will become more severe, new research published by Yale School of Public Health has found that more people are likely to avoid illness if vaccines are given out first to those most likely to transmit viruses, rather than to those at highest risk for complications. This research differs from current vaccination recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
The Yale study appears in the August 20 issue of the journal Science online at the Science Express website, http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress. It will be published in the print journal Science at a later date.
The ACIP currently recommends that groups at high risk for complications of swine flu (novel influenza A or H1N1) be given priority for vaccination. The CDC recommends the same for seasonal flu vaccination. High-risk groups include children younger than 5 years old, adults 65 years of age and older, pregnant women, and those suffering from pulmonary, cardiovascular and other disorders.
But the study by Alison P. Galvani, Ph.D., an associate professor in the division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale, suggests that vaccines targeted at groups more likely to transmit flu viruses, rather than those at highest risk of complications, would result in fewer infections and improved survival rates.
