News & Perspective

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Sanofi Pasteur's Fluzone Quadrivalent (four-strain) injectable flu vaccine, the company announced today.

If the H7N9 influenza virus now circulating in China evolves into a pandemic strain, the world is likely to have great difficulty providing adequate supplies of an effective vaccine in time to blunt its impact, according to a viewpoint article by three experts in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today recommended changing one of the three vaccine strains for the Northern Hemisphere's next flu season, based on the changing profile of circulating influenza B strains.

An expert group that met in Geneva earlier this week suggested changing the B component of the vaccine, but sticking with the A/H3N2 and A/H1N1 components.

(CIDRAP News) – Top federal health officials who testified on Capitol Hill today said the nation has much better influenza defenses today than it had 10 years ago, but one of them predicted that a "universal" flu vaccine is probably still 5 to 10 years away.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first influenza vaccine produced with the help of an insect virus and recombinant DNA technology, an approach the agency says may make it possible to start production faster in the event of a flu pandemic.