A lady receives a booster of Moderna’s coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine at a vaccination center in Antwerp, Belgium, February 1, 2022.
Johanna Geron | Reuters
Patients are actually signing up for an early-stage clinical trial for testing universal flu vaccine based on messenger RNA technology, the National Institutes of Health announced on Monday.
Scientists hope the vaccine will protect against multiple flu strains and supply long-term immunity, so people won’t have to get the vaccine every 12 months.
Behind the technology is an RNA or mRNA messenger Modernis and Pfizerwidely used Covid vaccines. NIH was instrumental in developing the mRNA platform used by Moderna.
“A universal flu vaccine could function a very important line of defense against the spread of a future flu pandemic,” Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, acting director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a press release Monday.
According to the NIH, up to 50 healthy people aged 18 to 49 will be enrolled within the universal flu vaccine to see if the experimental injection is protected and triggers an immune response.
The study may even include participants who receive the quadrivalent influenza vaccine, which protects against 4 strains of the virus, to compare the experimental universal vaccine with those currently on the market.
The universal injection was developed by scientists on the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The clinical trial is being conducted by volunteers from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
The present generation of influenza vaccines provide essential protection against hospitalization, but vaccine effectiveness can vary greatly from 12 months to 12 months.
Scientists now have to predict months prematurely which strains of influenza will prevail, in order that vaccine manufacturers have time to produce vaccines ahead of the respiratory virus season.
Predominant flu strains can change over time as experts select strains and manufacturers roll out vaccines. In some seasons, arrows don’t match well with the strains circulating and are consequently less effective.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, flu vaccines reduce the danger of getting sick by 40% to 60% in the event that they are well matched to the circulating strains. But in some years, vaccine effectiveness was as little as 19% since the vaccine was not well matched.
According to the CDC, flu killed between 12,000 and 52,000 people a 12 months in the USA between 2010 and 2020, depending on the strains circulating and the way well the vaccines matched.