Influenza News

The 2018-2019 influenza season in the United States was of moderate severity and lasted 21 weeks, making it the longest in 10 years, researchers from the CDC’s Influenza Division reported in MMWR.

Research has shown that an influenza pandemic is more likely to strike in the spring or summer than at the height of seasonal influenza season. But is there any way to predict exactly when the next one will occur? Infectious Disease News asked Peter Palese, PhD, professor and chair of the department of microbiology in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, if the world is due.

Influenza seasons are often unpredictable in timing, severity and which virus will predominate. Influenza pandemics, caused by novel viruses, are always unpredictable. The last one, in 2009, marked the emergence of a new influenza A(H1N1) virus — originally called “swine flu” — and the first influenza pandemic in 41 years.

Research presented at the American Thoracic Society’s International Meeting suggests that although e-cigarettes and cigarettes can leave people susceptible to viral illness, the products affect the immune system differently. Researchers noted that e-cigarette use may specifically impair patients’ adaptive antiviral immune response.

The NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded $30 million to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to research children’s first exposures to influenza and how their immune system reacts to infection in the future.

Seqirus announced plans manufacture its influenza vaccine for the 2019-2020 season using an exclusively cell-based production process for the first time.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, voted unanimously today to approve a new H3N2 component for next season’s influenza vaccines in the United States.

Infectious Diseases in Children asked Janet R. Gilsdorf, MD, DSc (Hon), FPIDS, a past president of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the Robert P. Kelch Research Professor Emerita at the University of Michigan Medical Center, how she saw the value of the pediatric ID specialty, why she went into the field and what it means to her.

Pediatric infectious disease specialists are the lowest paid physicians compared with all other medical specialties, according to a recent report.

The AAP recently announced that children can be vaccinated with either an inactivated influenza vaccine or a live-attenuated influenza vaccine for the 2019-2020 influenza season.