{"id":29852,"date":"2010-10-24T08:19:05","date_gmt":"2010-10-24T08:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/high-dose-flu-vaccine-for-the-elderly\/"},"modified":"2010-10-24T08:19:05","modified_gmt":"2010-10-24T08:19:05","slug":"high-dose-flu-vaccine-for-the-elderly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/medicine\/high-dose-flu-vaccine-for-the-elderly.php","title":{"rendered":"High Dose Flu Vaccine for the Elderly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Novella\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencebasedmedicine.org\/?p=7223\">has recently written <\/a>about this year\u2019s seasonal flu vaccine and Dr. Crislip <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencebasedmedicine.org\/?p=2040\">has reviewed the evidence for flu vaccine efficacy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s one little wrinkle that they didn\u2019t address \u2014 one that I\u2019m more attuned to because I\u2019m older than they are.\u00a0 I got my Medicare card last summer, so I am now officially one of the elderly. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/16213065\">A recent review<\/a> by Goodwin <em>et al.<\/em> showed that the antibody response to flu vaccines is significantly lower in the elderly.\u00a0\u00a0They called for a more immunogenic vaccine formulation for that age group.\u00a0My age group.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>One manufacturer has responded. Fluzone High-Dose vaccine contains 60 mcg of hemagglutinin antigen from each strain, compared to 15 mcg in the standard dose vaccine. This high-dose preparation has been tested in three clinical studies (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/16717175\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/17913310\">here<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/19508159\">here<\/a>) of 4453 healthy people aged 65 years and older.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In each of these studies the high-dose vaccine produced significantly higher antibody levels than the standard dose vaccine. There was a dose-related increase in minor local side effects (arm pain, redness and swelling at the injection site) but no increase in serious adverse effects. Most recipients had minimal or no adverse effects. We don\u2019t yet have data to prove that the increase in antibody titers will result in fewer clinical influenza illnesses and complications, but it seems logical that it would. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/flu\/protect\/vaccine\/qa_fluzone.htm#does_cdc\">A study<\/a> comparing the effectiveness of Fluzone High-Dose to Fluzone is expected to be completed in 2012. The high-dose vaccine is more expensive, but Medicare pays for it.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<em>The Medical Letter<\/em> recently covered the 2010-2011 flu vaccines and did not recommend (or advise against) the high-dose formulation for older patients, because the clinical efficacy data are not yet available. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/flu\/protect\/vaccine\/qa_fluzone.htm#does_cdc\">Neither the CDC nor the ACIP<\/a> has been willing to express a preference for one vaccine over another at this time. I asked our own infectious disease expert, Dr. Crislip, and he recommends the high-dose in view of its improved immunogenicity and biological plausibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m 65 and my husband is older: we\u00a0opted for the high-dose vaccine. Not everyone will agree, but shouldn\u2019t older patients be given the facts and the option?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Novella\u00a0 has recently written about this year\u2019s seasonal flu vaccine and Dr. Crislip has reviewed the evidence for flu vaccine efficacy. There\u2019s one little wrinkle that they didn\u2019t address \u2014 one that I\u2019m more attuned to because I\u2019m older &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/medicine\/high-dose-flu-vaccine-for-the-elderly.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicine"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}