Several studies have attempted to predict the cost-effectiveness of interventions (including prepandemic vaccination) to help protect against a future pandemic, however estimating the cost-effectiveness has been complicated by uncertainty as to the severity of a potential future pandemic and the efficacy of measures against it. Research
Influenza research includes molecular virology, molecular evolution, pathogenesis, host immune responses, genomics, and epidemiology. These help in developing influenza countermeasures such as vaccines, therapies and diagnostic tools. Improved influenza countermeasures require basic research on how viruses enter cells, replicate, mutate, evolve into new strains and induce an immune response. The Influenza Genome Sequencing Project is creating a library of influenza sequences that will help researchers understanding of what makes one strain more lethal than another, what genetic determinants most affect immunogenicity, and how the virus evolves over time. Solutions to limitations in current vaccine methods are being researched. A different approach uses Internet content to estimate the impact of an influenza vaccination campaign. More specifically, researchers have used data from Twitter and Microsofts Bing search engine, and proposed a statistical framework which, after a series of operations, maps this information to estimates of the influenza-like illness reduction percentage in areas where vaccinations have been performed. The method has been used to quantify the impact of two flu vaccination programmes in England (2013/14 and 2014/15), where school-age children were administered a live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV). Notably, the impact estimates were in accordance with estimations from Public Health England based on traditional syndromic surveillance endpoints.
Other
Several studies have identified an increased incidence of narcolepsy among recipients of the pandemic H1N1 influenza AS03-adjuvanted vaccine; efforts to identify a mechanism for this suggest that narcolepsy is autoimmune, and that the AS03-adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine may mimic hypocretin, serving as a trigger.Some injection-based flu vaccines intended for adults in the United States contain thiomersal (also known as thimerosal), a mercury-based preservative. Despite some controversy in the media, the World Health Organizations Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety has concluded that there is no evidence of toxicity from thiomersal in vaccines and no reason on grounds of safety to change to more-expensive single-dose administration. Types
Flu vaccines are available either as:
a trivalent or quadrivalent intramuscular injection (IIV3, IIV4, or RIV4, that is, TIV or QIV), which contains the inactivated form of the virus
a nasal spray of live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV, Q/LAIV), which contains the live but attenuated (weakened) form of the virus.TIV or QIV induce protection after injection (typically intramuscular, though subcutaneous and intradermal routes can also be protective) based on an immune response to the antigens present on the inactivated virus, while cold-adapted LAIV works by establishing infection in the nasal passages.