Flu vaccine spray may be better for young kids

WASHINGTON – Flu shots don’t protect babies and preschoolers quite as well as they do older children, but a new study suggests spraying flu vaccine into a small tot’s nose may work better.

The study, presented Monday at a child health meeting, found spray vaccine was 55 percent more effective than traditional flu shots when given to nearly 8,000 children under age 5.

The nasal spray FluMist, the only flu vaccine made of live but weakened influenza virus, now is sold only for children 5 and older. Manufacturer MedImmune Inc., which funded the new research, plans to seek government approval to sell FluMist for younger children as well.

Flu experts say the findings have important public health implications. Each winter, flu kills 36,000 Americans, most of them elderly. Children are influenza’s prime spreaders, fueling infections in those older people.

“Our current thinking is that to control influenza, we really have to vaccinate all children,” said Dr. Robert Belshe, a prominent vaccine specialist at St. Louis University who led the new study. “Anything that makes it easier and more effective (to vaccinate) children is going to contribute a lot to the protection against influenza.”

In the study, 3.9 percent of nasal-spray recipients got sick with influenza, compared with 8.6 percent of shot recipients.

The study did find a safety concern: A few of the very youngest patients, those ages 6 months to 2 years, had an episode of asthma-like wheezing in the weeks after the first FluMist dose.

The increased risk was slight – 1 percent more children wheezed after FluMist than after flu shots – and the reaction was temporary. But Belshe still is analyzing whether the risk would offset the increased flu protection, and regulators undoubtedly will ask whether it means FluMist should be used only after age 2.