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A woman receives a booster dose of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at a vaccination center in Antwerp, Belgium, February 1, 2022.
Joanna Geron | Reuters
Patients are now enrolling in early-stage clinical trials to test A Universal influenza vaccine based on messenger RNA technology, the National Institutes of Health announced Monday.
Scientists hope the vaccine will protect against a wide range of influenza strains and provide long-term immunity so people don’t have to get a shot every year.
Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is the technology behind it accident‘sand PfizerWidely used Covid vaccines. The National Institutes of Health played an important role in developing the mRNA platform used by Moderna.
“A universal influenza vaccine can serve as an important line of defense against future influenza pandemics,” Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, acting director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement Monday.
A trial of a universal flu vaccine will enroll up to 50 healthy people ages 18 to 49 to test whether the experimental shot is safe and produces an immune response, according to the National Institutes of Health.
The study will also include participants receiving a quadrivalent influenza vaccine, which protects against four strains of the virus, to compare the global experimental shot with that currently on the market.
The global shot was developed by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The clinical trial is enrolling volunteers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
The current generation of influenza vaccines provide important protection against hospitalization, but the effectiveness of vaccines can vary greatly from year to year.
Scientists currently have to predict months in advance which influenza strains will dominate so that vaccine manufacturers have time to produce vaccines before the respiratory virus season.
Prevalent flu strains can change between the time experts select strains and manufacturers release vaccines. In some seasons, shots don’t match well with spread strains and are less effective as a result.
Flu vaccines reduce the risk of getting sick by 40% to 60% when they match well with the strains in circulation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But in some years, vaccine efficacy has been as low as 19% because the vaccine wasn’t a good match.
Influenza killed between 12,000 and 52,000 people a year in the United States from 2010 to 2020 depending on the strains circulating and how compatible the shots are, according to the CDC.
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