News & Perspective

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 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.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday approved the nation's first cell-based flu vaccine, a product from Novartis that uses technology that could help vaccinate more Americans in a pandemic but still has many of the same limitations of older egg-based flu vaccines.

(CIDRAP News) – A government advisory committee yesterday endorsed the safety and immunogenicity of an adjuvant-containing H5N1 influenza vaccine proposed for inclusion in the US pandemic emergency stockpile, signaling that it could become the first adjuvanted flu vaccine to win approval in the United States.

(CIDRAP News) – During the 2009 influenza pandemic, clinicians were frustrated by the lack of useful diagnostic tests, the government had no national system for monitoring stress on healthcare facilities, and there was some duplication in federal media campaigns.

(CIDRAP News) – Clinicians are heeding antiviral prescribing guidance changes made over the past decade because of antiviral resistance and a greater focus on protecting high-risk patients, particularly during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, researchers reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Novartis's new cell-culture based influenza vaccine factory in North Carolina has begun making a prepandemic H5N1 flu vaccine and is ready to start producing vaccines for a real pandemic when needed, the company and federal health officials announced yesterday.

The facility in Holly Springs, N.C., billed as the first of its kind in the United States, was dedicated yesterday after a long testing process.