Too young for flu shot?

"john" wrote in message
m...
"HCN" wrote in message
news:adxAb.45816$_M.209706@attbi_s54...
"C Du" wrote in message
m...
Why the american ped association did not recommend flu shots to kids?
I
especially concerned since other sources suggested flu shots for kids
under
2 and my son is 10 months old and he's in day care.

...


150 years old.

"The flu vaccine gets the most-useless-vaccine-of-all-time award. Now
the CDC is recommending the vaccine for children under two years old
and all adults over 50. Don't fall for it."---Randall Neustaedter OMD
http://www.whale.to/v/quotes3.html

Considering that the flu vaccine has saved thousands of lives (almost every
year, there is a near-perfect match between the influenza viruses and the
vaccine -- this year, this is true for 2 of 3 of the viruses in the
vaccines), and does appear to provide at least some protection against the
influenza viruses going around, the only thing here that is useless is the
whaleto site. Apparently the author is too ashamed to put his name on the
site, probably because he clearly has no clue about science, medicines or
vaccines.

http://www.cdc.gov/nip/
http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/mic...e.jsp?id=75918

On Sun, 7 Dec 2003 16:33:26 -0500, "Jeff"
wrote:

"PF Riley" wrote in message
...

The idea that it might be a Good Thing to immunize all children from 6
months to 2 years of age is based on rather weak evidence that
influenza is significantly worse in that age group than in older
children. In the meantime, we are running out of flu vaccine that
could have been given to much better established high-risk groups,
such as the elderly and children with asthma.

Can you provide evidence that kids from 6 months to two years are able to
fend off illness better than older kids? Or that the influenza doesn't hit
them hard?

Huh? When have I made either such claim? You are confused.

I believe that healthy children age 6 months to 2 years ARE at
increased risk of morbidity and mortality from influenza. (And even if
I didn't believe this, it certainly wouldn't be my responsibility to
disprove the notion, just as it's not my duty to prove that homeopathy
doesn't work. Do you follow?) However, I will say it again: The
evidence that they are SIGNIFICANTLY worse off (i.e., at a risk level
comparable to the elderly) is weak. Initial studies were done on all
respiratory illnesses, when everyone knows the vast, vast, vast
majority of hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses in young
children during fall/winter is due to RSV. The ACIP still decided to
"encourage" the shot for the younger age group because of subsequent
studies that they claim "attempted to separate the effects of
respiratory syncytial viruses and influenza viruses on rates of
hospitalization among children who do not have high-risk conditions."
The way they did this (two studies were cited) was to look at local
surveillance data, calculate influenza-to-RSV ratios, and determine
the "excess cases" of hospitalizations ASSUMED to be due to influenza.

Like I said, weak evidence. It would be nice to see a prospective
study of hospitalized children where real virologic data is obtained,
but it will probably never happen, now that the ACIP's is changing
from "encouraging" the vaccine to "recommending" it for children aged
6 to 24 months. Is this necessarily a Good Thing? Are we better off if
we run out of vaccine for 7-year-old asthmatics and 2-year-old left
hypoplasts because we used it all up on healthy 1-year-olds?

PF

"PF Riley" wrote in message
...
..

Like I said, weak evidence. It would be nice to see a prospective
study of hospitalized children where real virologic data is obtained,
but it will probably never happen, now that the ACIP's is changing
from "encouraging" the vaccine to "recommending" it for children aged
6 to 24 months. Is this necessarily a Good Thing? Are we better off if
we run out of vaccine for 7-year-old asthmatics and 2-year-old left
hypoplasts because we used it all up on healthy 1-year-olds?

The other problem is that in the first year at least the immunization
requires two shots a month apart. This is guaranteed to cause an extra visit
to the office to get the second shot since by the time the shot becomes
available it is not possible to wait the normal 3 month interval between
visits at this age. Even if you can talk the parents into adding another
immunization to the first two years the extra trip will be a hard sell. I'm
not sure we should be trying without a pretty sound reason.

--
CBI, MD

On Mon, 08 Dec 2003 02:47:50 GMT, "CBI" wrote:

"PF Riley" wrote in message
...

Like I said, weak evidence. It would be nice to see a prospective
study of hospitalized children where real virologic data is obtained,
but it will probably never happen, now that the ACIP's is changing
from "encouraging" the vaccine to "recommending" it for children aged
6 to 24 months. Is this necessarily a Good Thing? Are we better off if
we run out of vaccine for 7-year-old asthmatics and 2-year-old left
hypoplasts because we used it all up on healthy 1-year-olds?

The other problem is that in the first year at least the immunization
requires two shots a month apart. This is guaranteed to cause an extra visit
to the office to get the second shot since by the time the shot becomes
available it is not possible to wait the normal 3 month interval between
visits at this age. Even if you can talk the parents into adding another
immunization to the first two years the extra trip will be a hard sell. I'm
not sure we should be trying without a pretty sound reason.

Indeed, and this causes the healthy infants to consume twice as much
vaccine.

I understand studies are underway to figure out if immunizing with the
current strain every 6 months will help. Then give the flu shot at 6
months and 12 months of age, regardless of the season. No extra
visits, no confusion caused by adding a seasonal vaccine to the
ordinarily age-based schedule, etc.

PF

"PF Riley" wrote in message
...

I understand studies are underway to figure out if immunizing with the
current strain every 6 months will help. Then give the flu shot at 6
months and 12 months of age, regardless of the season. No extra
visits, no confusion caused by adding a seasonal vaccine to the
ordinarily age-based schedule, etc.

That's an interesting idea. Of course, it would mean that the shot would
have to be available all yr round (and in the right formulations).

--
CBIO, MD