Mar 11, 2011 (CIDRAP News) – Researchers from the University of Michigan say one measure of flu vaccine efficacy that has been used in a number of past controlled trials is not very accurate, and that this may have led to a degree of overselling of the protection the vaccines provide.
Writing in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, Joshua G. Petrie and colleagues describe the effects of using different "end points," or measures for detecting infection, in a 4-year flu vaccine efficacy trial they conducted. They found that using serologic measures—an increase in flu antibodies—in vaccinated individuals as evidence of infection leads to an overestimate of vaccine efficacy.
They also concluded that virus isolation—growing the flu virus in cell culture—was not very accurate, as the viruses are hard to culture, resulting in missed cases. The most accurate tool, they found, was real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). .... Continúa
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