The Rising Need For Children To Get Universal Influenza Vaccination

Multiple, routine influenza vaccinations may prove ineffective for your child. If this were the case, then you would be glad to know that effective universal influenza vaccination is well on its way to shelves.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration have conducted studies for this "universal" influenza vaccine. According to their research, this all-inclusive flu vaccine has been tested in animal models and has proven to be effective against antigens common across multiple strains of the flu. This would mean that infants and children would no longer need to be vaccinated annually or multiple times per year for different strains of the flu.

The FDA has come out with a statement saying that their universal vaccine would "decrease the severity of disease, speed up the ability of the body to clear itself of the virus, and reduce the fatality rate of infections until a specific vaccine against that virus is available." Because getting vaccinated for the flu is recommended for everybody aged 6 months and up, this would effectively decrease the mortality rate among children.

The universal vaccine uses a modified form of the PanAd3 protein. "Humans are generally not exposed to PanAd3," according to the U.S. FDA, and the human immune system is "not primed to attack it." What this means is that it is unlikely for the immune system to reject the PanAd3 vaccine, potentially making an integral part of childhood vaccination.

Although flu vaccines have been around since the late 1940s, a 2012 study concludes that researchers still need to improve on them due to the fact that there are multiple strains of influenza present according to an article published on MedScape. The flu vaccines available today only combat a handful of these strains, which means children are still at high risk of contracting the disease.

Without a ubiquitous type of vaccination, experts would still have to hypothesize about which influenza strains are likely to affect a certain population. This would put a large number of infants, toddlers, and children at risk. Despite the fact that these are highly educated guesses, they are still not 100% accurate.

If universal flu vaccines were developed, scientists would no longer have to predict which strains would affect a certain populace in a particular time frame, Science Mag reported. Also, because universal flu vaccines would be available off the shelves, they would become available to a greater amount of people.