Requirements of New Vaccines against Novel Influenza Viruses

The currently available influenza vaccines were developed in the 1930s through the 1960s using technologies that were state-of-the art for the times. Decades of advancement in virology and immunology have provided the tools for making better vaccines against influenza virus. Among young children, live attenuated vaccine had significantly better efficacy than inactivated vaccine. An evaluation of the risks and benefits indicates that live attenuated vaccine should be a highly effective, safe vaccine for children 12 to 59 months of age who do not have a history of asthma or wheezing. Otherwise, MF59 adjuvanted influenza vaccine, ATIV was well tolerated in healthy young children and elderly after each of 3 doses and induced greater, longer-lasting, and broader immune responses than a nonadjuvanted trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine, TIV. The enhanced immunogenicity of the adjuvanted vaccine was most evident in very young children and for the B vaccine strain. In case of AS03 ATIV, the safety signal of increased narcolepsy diagnoses following the start of the pandemic vaccination campaign as observed in Sweden and Finland could be observed with this approach. An increase in narcolepsy diagnoses was not observed in other countries, where vaccination coverage was low in the affected age group, or did not follow influenza. A(H1N1)pdm09 vaccination. Patient level analyses in these countries are being conducted to verify the signal in more detail. In conclusion, current improved influenza vaccines are; in the problem target groups are children aged 6–24 months and people over 65 years old of age. Only ATIV has shown significantly greater efficacy than TIV, and its safe.