February 25, 2011 — Meet the new influenza vaccine: it's the same as the old one. The trivalent vaccine for the 2011-2012 influenza season in the Northern Hemisphere will probably be essentially a clone of the current season’s vaccine, ruled members of the Vaccine and Related Biologic Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) to the US Food and Drug Administration today.
In 3 separate votes, the committee elected to retain the current formulation of the vaccine, containing the following components:
•Influenza A (H1N1) strain A/California/7/2009 (H1N1)-like virus (the pandemic 2009 strain that was distributed in a monovalent vaccine in the United States in 2009);
•Influenza A (H3N2) strain A/Perth/16/2009 (H3N2)-like virus; and
•Influenza B/Brisbane 60/2008-like virus (R/Victoria lineage; this will be third season in which this strain of influenza B has been included in the trivalent vaccine)
The strains are the same as those recommended by the World Health Organization earlier this week.
After considering the best possible information from worldwide surveillance, the committee chose the strains most likely to provide broad coverage of the population at large, but some committee members confessed to being uneasy about the choice.
"In addition to the sleepless night last night worrying about [influenza] B, I’m going to have another one tonight" said temporary voting member Pamela McInnes, DDS, MSc, director of the Division of Extramural Research at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda, Maryland.
"We make the decision we do with the data we have on the table, but I think for the record there is obvious discomfort and concern about this every year," she added.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/738038
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