tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
PHILADELPHIA - The low efficacy of last year's influenza vaccine can be attributed to a mutation in the H3N2 strain of the virus, a new study reports. Due to the mutation, most people receiving the egg-grown vaccine did not have immunity against H3N2 viruses that circulated last year, leaving the vaccine with only 20 to 30 percent effectiveness. Scott Hensley, PhD, an associate professor of Microbiology, in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, describes his team's findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.
"Our experiments suggest that influenza virus antigens grown in systems other than eggs are more likely to elicit protective antibody responses against H3N2 viruses that are currently circulating," Hensley said. "The 2017 vaccine that people are getting now has the same H3N2 strain as the 2016 vaccine, so this could be another difficult year if this season is dominated by H3N2 viruses again."
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https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-11/uops-hmi110317.php
"Our experiments suggest that influenza virus antigens grown in systems other than eggs are more likely to elicit protective antibody responses against H3N2 viruses that are currently circulating," Hensley said. "The 2017 vaccine that people are getting now has the same H3N2 strain as the 2016 vaccine, so this could be another difficult year if this season is dominated by H3N2 viruses again."
...
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-11/uops-hmi110317.php