New Recommendations For Upcoming Flu Season
Posted on: Monday, 6 October 2008, 09:20 CDT
New findings and preliminary data have lead health officials to expand the category of children who should receive routine flu shots.
In a new government document intended to prompt parents to have their children receive flu shots, public health officials found an increase in hard-to-treat complications resulting in the deaths of children with the flu.
Overall, the report found five times as many cases with hard-to-treat complications and a total of 73 flu-related deaths during the 2006-07 flu season.
More than half the children who died were between ages 5 and 17 and had no previous complications until they got the flu.
Early data also suggests that deaths rose again during the most recent flu season.
For these reasons, public health officials say it is absolutely necessary for children aged 6 months through 18 years to regularly receive flu shots.
Before this year, shots were recommended for kids under 5 years.
“It's an important message to say even healthy children develop complications and die almost before anything much can be done for them," said Dr. Gregory Poland, a Mayo Clinic infectious disease specialist. He was not involved in the federal study, but has worked with a federal vaccine advisory committee and has consulted for vaccine makers.
The study appeared in the October edition of Pediatrics just before this year’s vaccine is expected to become available.
Several manufacturers of U.S. influenza vaccine began shipping vaccine for the 2008-09 influenza season in August. Most of the vaccine is expected to be distributed by the end of November, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study was based on an analysis of reported flu deaths from the 2004-05 through 2006-07 seasons. Flu deaths in children during those seasons totaled 47, 46 and 73, respectively.
Additionally, bacterial infections among children were up from 6 percent to 36 percent. Most had staph infections, and 60 percent of those involved the dangerous MRSA bug, which is resistant to antibiotics.
Preliminary information also suggests there has been no drop in fatal flu-staph cases in children, and those could still be on the rise too, she said.
Staph germs commonly live in the nose or skin without causing illness; more than one-fourth of U.S. children and adults carry them.
More recent data suggest flu deaths among children have continued to rise, with 86 tallied for the 2007-08 season in a preliminary report last month, said Lyn Finelli, the study's lead author, who is a researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new recommendations come as vaccine manufacturer’s are projecting that as many as 143 million to 146 million doses of influenza vaccine will be produced for use in the United States during the 2008-09 influenza season. This is an all-time high supply of vaccine making it possible for more people than ever to seek protection from the flu.
The CDC also recommends that pregnant women, people over the age of 50, those who live in nursing homes and those with certain chronic medical conditions should receive vaccinations during the upcoming flu season.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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