Nasal Spray Flu Vaccine Beats Shots For Kids Under 5

It cut flu cases by nearly 55% compared to injected version, study finds.

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter
Wednesday, February 14, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 14 (HealthDay News) -- In news that's sure to be met with millions of tiny shouts of glee, researchers report that the nasal spray version of the flu vaccine is much better than the shot at protecting the youngest children against the flu.

In a study that included about 8,000 children under the age of 5, those receiving the live vaccine via nasal spray had 54.9 percent fewer cases of lab-confirmed flu than children receiving the inactive, injected form of the vaccine.

"The nasal spray vaccine was significantly better at protecting children than the standard flu shot," said study author Dr. Robert Belshe, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Saint Louis University Medical Center, in St. Louis.

Just don't tell your youngster that the flu shot is a thing of the past yet -- the nasal flu vaccine isn't yet FDA-approved for this age group, said Belshe. However, MedImmune Inc. -- the company that makes the vaccine -- has applied for government approval to dispense the vaccine to children under 5.

"It looks like the live attenuated vaccine has promise to improve the prevention of influenza in young children. We'll have to weigh the risks and benefits and we have to see what the FDA has to say, but it's nice that we may have another tool," said the co-author of an accompanying editorial, Dr. Carolyn Bridges, associate director of science in the influenza division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Results of the study, which was partially funded by MedImmune, appear in the Feb. 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study included about 8,000 children -- 8,352 provided complete safety data and 7,852 completed the entire study protocol -- from 249 international sites. Study sites were located in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

The children were between 6 and 59 months old, and hadn't had a recent episode of wheezing or been diagnosed with severe asthma. They were randomly assigned to receive either the live attenuated vaccine (FluMist) or the inactivated vaccine by injection.