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JAMA. Effect of Influenza Vaccination of Children on Infection Rates in Hutterite Communities - A Randomized Trial

Giuseppe

Emeritus
Effect of Influenza Vaccination of Children on Infection Rates in Hutterite Communities: A Randomized Trial (JAMA, abstract, edited)

Effect of Influenza Vaccination of Children on Infection Rates in Hutterite Communities - A Randomized Trial

[Source: JAMA, March 10, 2010: LINK. EDITED.]

Mark Loeb, MD, MSc; Margaret L. Russell, MD, PhD; Lorraine Moss, BSc; Kevin Fonseca, PhD; Julie Fox, PhD; David J. D. Earn, PhD; Fred Aoki, MD; Gregory Horsman, MD; Paul Van Caeseele, MD; Khami Chokani, MD; Mark Vooght, MD; Lorne Babiuk, PhD; Richard Webby, PhD; Stephen D. Walter, PhD

JAMA. 2010;303(10):943-950.


Context
Children and adolescents appear to play an important role in the transmission of influenza. Selectively vaccinating youngsters against influenza may interrupt virus transmission and protect those not immunized.

Objective
To assess whether vaccinating children and adolescents with inactivated influenza vaccine could prevent influenza in other community members.

Design, Setting, and Participants
A cluster randomized trial involving 947 Canadian children and adolescents aged 36 months to 15 years who received study vaccine and 2326 community members who did not receive the study vaccine in 49 Hutterite colonies in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Follow-up began December 28, 2008, and ended June 23, 2009.

Intervention
Children were randomly assigned according to community and in a blinded manner to receive standard dosing of either inactivated trivalent influenza vaccine or hepatitis A vaccine, which was used as a control.

Main Outcome Measures
Confirmed influenza A and B infection using a real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay and by measuring serum hemagglutination inhibition titers.

Results
The mean rate of study vaccine coverage among eligible participants was 83% (range, 53%-100%) for the influenza vaccine colonies and 79% (range, 50%-100%) for the hepatitis A vaccine colonies. Among nonrecipients, 39 of 1271 (3.1%) in the influenza vaccine colonies and 80 of 1055 (7.6%) in the hepatitis A vaccine colonies had influenza illness confirmed by RT-PCR, for a protective effectiveness of 61% (95% confidence interval [CI], 8%-83%; P = .03). Among all study participants (those who were and those who were not vaccinated), 80 of 1773 (4.5%) in the influenza vaccine colonies and 159 of 1500 (10.6%) in the hepatitis A vaccine colonies had influenza illness confirmed by RT-PCR for an overall protective effectiveness of 59% (95% CI, 5%-82%; P = .04). No serious vaccine adverse events were observed.

Conclusion
Immunizing children and adolescents with inactivated influenza vaccine significantly protected unimmunized residents of rural communities against influenza.

Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00877396


Author Affiliations:
Departments of Pathology and Molecular Medicine (Dr Loeb and Ms Moss), Medicine (Dr Loeb), and Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Drs Loeb, Earn, and Walter), Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research (Drs Loeb and Earn), and Department of Mathematics and Statistics (Dr Earn), McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario; Department of Community Health Sciences (Dr Russell) and Provincial Laboratory for Public Health and Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (Drs Fonseca and Fox), University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta; Departments of Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology, and Therapeutics, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg (Dr Aoki); Saskatchewan Disease Control Laboratory, Regina (Dr Horsman); Cadham Provincial Laboratory, Winnipeg, Manitoba (Dr Van Caeseele); Saskatchewan Health, Cypress Health Region, Swift Current (Dr Chokani); Saskatchewan Health, Five Hills, Moose Jaw (Dr Vooght); and University of Alberta, Edmonton (Dr Babiuk), Canada; and St Jude Children's Research Hospital and WHO Collaborating Center, Memphis, Tennessee (Dr Webby).​
<cite cite="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/303/10/943?etoc"></cite>-
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Re: JAMA. Effect of Influenza Vaccination of Children on Infection Rates in Hutterite Communities - A Randomized Trial

VACCINATING CHILDREN AGAINST FLU HELPS PROTECT WIDER COMMUNITY - Trial Results in Rural Canadians Show Effect of Herd Immunity (US NIH, edited)

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH NIH News

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) (LINK)

Embargoed for Release: Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 4 p.m. EST

CONTACT: Anne A. Oplinger, 301-402-1663, 301-402-1663, <e-mail: aoplinger@niaid.nih.gov >

NIAID MEDIA AVAILABILITY

This NIH News Release is available online at: (LINK).


VACCINATING CHILDREN AGAINST FLU HELPS PROTECT WIDER COMMUNITY - Trial Results in Rural Canadians Show Effect of Herd Immunity


WHAT:
Results of a clinical trial conducted in a largely self-contained religious community during the 2008-09 influenza season show that immunizing children against seasonal influenza can significantly protect unvaccinated community members against influenza as well. The study was conducted to determine if immunized children could act as a barrier to limit the spread of influenza to the wider, unvaccinated community, a concept known as herd immunity.

Researchers recruited volunteers from 46 Canadian Hutterite religious colonies that have limited contact with surrounding, non-Hutterite populations. A total of 947 children between 36 months to 15 years of age participated in the trial; 502 children in 22 colonies received 2008-09 seasonal influenza vaccine, while 445 youth in the other colonies received hepatitis A vaccine. The hepatitis A vaccine served as a control vaccine for comparison.

In the six months after the children were vaccinated, 119 of 2,326 unvaccinated community members (who were of all ages) developed laboratory confirmed cases of influenza. Of these, 80 of 1,055 were from colonies where children received hepatitis vaccine, while 39 of 1,271 were from colonies where children received the influenza vaccine.

The researchers found that influenza vaccination was 61 percent effective at indirectly preventing illness-that is, protecting via herd immunity-in unvaccinated individuals if they lived in a colony where approximately 80 percent of the children had received flu vaccine. The findings, they write, "...offer experimental proof to support selective influenza immunization of school aged children...to interrupt influenza transmission. Particularly, if there are constraints in quantity and delivery of vaccine, it may be advantageous to selectively immunize children in order to reduce community transmission of influenza."

Mark Loeb, M.D., of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, led the trial. The research was funded in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.

An illustration showing how vaccination generates herd immunity is available at (LINK).


ARTICLE:
M Loeb et al. Effect of influenza vaccination of children on infection rates in Hutterite communities. JAMA 303:943-50 DOI: 10.1001/jama.303.10.943 (2010).


WHO:
NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., and Linda Lambert, Ph.D., chief, Respiratory Diseases Branch, Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, NIAID, are available to comment on the study.

NIAID conducts and supports research-at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide-to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID Web site at (LINK).

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit (LINK).

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