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Last year's flu season will remain one of the worst in history. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the 2017-2018 influenza season has sickened millions of people and killed 80,000 Americans, including 180 children.
The impact was so severe, in part, because the strain that dominated last season shifted in the six months between flu vaccine development and the time physicians started giving it patients. The CDC estimated that last season's influenza vaccine was about 40% effective.
But researchers are cautiously optimistic about this season. They have a good idea of the dominant strain and there is nothing to indicate that it has undergone a radical mutation, which means that the vaccine could be very effective.
"Get vaccinated against the flu," Daily Beast Scott Hensley, an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Daily Beast.
Determining which influenza strain will spread and creating a vaccine to fight it is like an elaborate guessing game that starts months before the start of the season. In fact, the FDA's advisory committee on the vaccine met Wednesday to begin work on next year's vaccine.
"Get vaccinated against the flu."
– Scott Hensley, University of Pennsylvania
The influenza vaccine is generally composed of two subtypes of influenza A – H1N1 and H3N2 – and influenza B. (There are two other non-epidemic influenza strains: C, which can cause a mild respiratory disease, and D, which affects only livestock.)
The molecular composition of each subtype may vary and the more the vaccine matches it, the better it works. But doing this correspondence is delicate and not entirely under the control of scientists.
"We could expect one strain and another," said Kathryn Edwards, professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University and chair of the FDA committee.
"We may not be ready with the perfect match for the vaccine, so it would be a vaccine that looks exactly like the flu that is circulating and is very effective, but we can not always predict that."
The last two years, H3N2 was the dominant virus. A generally vicious subtype that still shocked epidemiologists with its ferocity, causing more damage than even the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic, which infected about 59 million people and killed 12,000 people.
The good news is that if you had the flu these past two years, you could benefit from a very good immunity if the H3N2 virus increased again this season.
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But the researchers say that they do not think it will happen anyway.
"I do not want to predict that the season will be sweet, but there is a good chance it will be a year against the H1N1 flu," Hensley said.
As far as scientists can judge, the H1N1 virus has not mutated as much as the H3N2 virus, but only time will tell if the vaccine fits the strain well.
"Perfect would be a vaccine that looks like flu that circulates and is very effective," said Edwards, who has been studying the flu for more than four decades. "But we can not always predict that."
One of the reasons it is difficult to make a perfect vaccine is that influenza vaccine development takes place six months in advance. The composition of the vaccine being distributed has now been decided in February.
Researchers often travel to South America to find out what types of flu are circulating there, Edwards said; Hensley also pointed to Australia. Both continents are in the southern hemisphere and have their influenza season at opposite times of North America, offering a kind of flu preview.
"Perfect would be a flu-like vaccine that circulates and is very effective. But we can not always predict that."
– Kathryn Edwards, President of VRBPAC
Armed with this information, the FDA committee decides which molecular versions of each strain should be included in the latest US flu vaccine. It's up to the FDA to make the final decision. "They take a recommendation but they may disagree," Edwards said.
Even though last year's flu vaccine was a failure, the researchers urge Americans – even the healthiest without compromised immune systems – to get vaccinated.
"We conducted a study of hospitalized patients with pneumonia and asked them if they had been vaccinated against the flu, and we found that [the flu shot] Edwards, said Edwards. More than 200 pediatric patients with influenza died. [in the 2017-2018 flu year] and about half of them had no chronic or underlying problems. "
Lesson? "Healthy people can get very sick from the flu," she said. "It's not necessary to be very risky to be really sick or die.We may not have perfect vaccines, but the best way to prevent a serious flu is the vaccine. "
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