The Flu And You

Everyone should get flu vaccine, experts say By MAGGIE FOX

Everyone in the United States over the age of six months should get seasonal influenza vaccines every year, federal vaccine advisers said last month.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices made the long-awaited vote to recommend virtually universal flu vaccination — something public health experts have long recommended.

“The new recommendation seeks to remove barriers to influenza immunization and signals the importance of preventing influenza across the entire population,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement. Earlier, experts told the committee that people who were morbidly obese and school-aged children were much more likely to become seriously ill or to die from H1N1 swine flu, as opposed to seasonal flu, which mostly kills the frail elderly.

Preliminary data showed the morbidly obese had four times the rate of hospitalizations and deaths, while the death rate for children was five times higher than usual, CDC experts said. The World Health Organization says it is too early to say the pandemic had peaked globally, although it has clearly waned in North America and Europe.

Experts said the pandemic version of H1N1 had clearly replaced its distant cousin, seasonal H1N1, this year. WHO and advisers to the FDA chose last month to replace the seasonal H1N1 component in next season’s flu vaccine with the swine flu strain.

Vaccine makers must reformulate the three-ingredient seasonal flu vaccine every year because of such changes. The United States has contracts with five influenza vaccine makers - Novartis, AstraZeneca unit MedImmune, Sanofi Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline and Australian vaccine maker CSL. The CDC estimates H1N1 has killed up to 17,000 people in the United States alone.

That figure compares to about 36,000 people killed every year by seasonal flu, but experts noted that it takes months to gather data on deaths. Flu weakens people, who then can die of heart attacks or strokes, and investigators said once that data is included; deaths this season from swine flu may be more than the normal 36,000. The CDC and WHO both say people who have not been vaccinated should still get an H1N1 vaccine.