REVIEW RSS FEED
CANADIAN STUDY RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT SWINE FLU VACCINE
Globe & Mail, Canada - A "perplexing" Canadian study linking H1N1 to seasonal flu shots is throwing national influenza plans into disarray and testing public faith in the government agencies responsible for protecting the nation's health.
Distributed for peer review last week, the study confounded infectious-disease experts in suggesting that people vaccinated against seasonal flu are twice as likely to catch swine flu.
The paper is under peer review, and lead researchers Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Gaston De Serres of Laval University must stay mum until it's published.
Met with intense early skepticism both in Canada and abroad, the paper has since convinced several provincial health agencies to announce hasty suspensions of seasonal flu vaccinations, long-held fixtures of public-health planning.
"It has confused things very badly," said Dr. Ethan Rubinstein, head of adult infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba. "And it has certainly cost us credibility from the public because of conflicting recommendations. Until last week, there had always been much encouragement to get the seasonal flu vaccine."
On Sunday Quebec joined Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia in suspending seasonal flu shots for anyone under 65 years of age. Quebec's Health Ministry announced it would postpone vaccinations until January, clearing the autumn months for health professionals to focus on vaccinating against H1N1, which is expected to the more severe influenza strain this season.
"By the time the H1N1 wave is over, there will be ample time to vaccinate for seasonal flu," Dr. Rubinstein said.
B.C. is expected to announce a similar suspension during a press conference Monday morning.
Other provinces, including Manitoba, are still pondering a response to the research.
New Brunswick is a lone hold-out, announcing last week it would forge ahead with seasonal flu shots for all residents in October, as originally planned.
So far, the study's impact is confined to Canada. Researchers in the U.S., Britain and Australia have not reported the same phenomenon. Marie-Paule Kieny, the World Health Organization's director of vaccine research, said last week the Canadian findings were an international anomaly and could constitute a "study bias."
An international panel is currently scrutinizing the research data. "The review process has been expedited, so we're hoping for a response within days," said Roy Wadia, spokesman for the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
Dr. Rubinstein, who has read the study, said it appears sound.
"There are a large number of authors, all of them excellent and credible researchers," he said. "And the sample size is very large – 12 or 13 million people taken from the central reporting systems in three provinces. The research is solid."
The vaccine suspensions do not apply for people over 65. Seniors are considered more susceptible to severe seasonal flu symptoms. At the same time, they carry antibodies from a 1957 pandemic that seem to neutralize the current version of H1N1.
Even if the statistical link is proven, the medical link between seasonal flu shots and H1N1 remains mysterious. One hypothesis suggests seasonal flu vaccine preoccupies the cells that would otherwise produce antibodies against H1N1.
But, according to Dr. Rubinstein, the research shows that people who received the seasonal shot during the 2007-08 flu season remained vulnerable to swine flu well into 2009 – an interval that should provide most immune systems ample restoration time.
"We don't understand the mechanism," Dr. Rubinstein said. "At the present time it is quite perplexing."
Distributed for peer review last week, the study confounded infectious-disease experts in suggesting that people vaccinated against seasonal flu are twice as likely to catch swine flu.
The paper is under peer review, and lead researchers Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Gaston De Serres of Laval University must stay mum until it's published.
Met with intense early skepticism both in Canada and abroad, the paper has since convinced several provincial health agencies to announce hasty suspensions of seasonal flu vaccinations, long-held fixtures of public-health planning.
"It has confused things very badly," said Dr. Ethan Rubinstein, head of adult infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba. "And it has certainly cost us credibility from the public because of conflicting recommendations. Until last week, there had always been much encouragement to get the seasonal flu vaccine."
On Sunday Quebec joined Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia in suspending seasonal flu shots for anyone under 65 years of age. Quebec's Health Ministry announced it would postpone vaccinations until January, clearing the autumn months for health professionals to focus on vaccinating against H1N1, which is expected to the more severe influenza strain this season.
"By the time the H1N1 wave is over, there will be ample time to vaccinate for seasonal flu," Dr. Rubinstein said.
B.C. is expected to announce a similar suspension during a press conference Monday morning.
Other provinces, including Manitoba, are still pondering a response to the research.
New Brunswick is a lone hold-out, announcing last week it would forge ahead with seasonal flu shots for all residents in October, as originally planned.
So far, the study's impact is confined to Canada. Researchers in the U.S., Britain and Australia have not reported the same phenomenon. Marie-Paule Kieny, the World Health Organization's director of vaccine research, said last week the Canadian findings were an international anomaly and could constitute a "study bias."
An international panel is currently scrutinizing the research data. "The review process has been expedited, so we're hoping for a response within days," said Roy Wadia, spokesman for the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
Dr. Rubinstein, who has read the study, said it appears sound.
"There are a large number of authors, all of them excellent and credible researchers," he said. "And the sample size is very large – 12 or 13 million people taken from the central reporting systems in three provinces. The research is solid."
The vaccine suspensions do not apply for people over 65. Seniors are considered more susceptible to severe seasonal flu symptoms. At the same time, they carry antibodies from a 1957 pandemic that seem to neutralize the current version of H1N1.
Even if the statistical link is proven, the medical link between seasonal flu shots and H1N1 remains mysterious. One hypothesis suggests seasonal flu vaccine preoccupies the cells that would otherwise produce antibodies against H1N1.
But, according to Dr. Rubinstein, the research shows that people who received the seasonal shot during the 2007-08 flu season remained vulnerable to swine flu well into 2009 – an interval that should provide most immune systems ample restoration time.
"We don't understand the mechanism," Dr. Rubinstein said. "At the present time it is quite perplexing."
5 Comments:
Unfortunately for Mr. Smith, I doubt this anomaly will feed his appetite for NWO-ZOG, H1N1 conspiracy theories.
Nice try though!
--
No need to change vaccine policy based on Canadian flu shot data: WHO
By Helen Branswell Medical
Canadian Press
October 4, 2009 - 7pm
TORONTO — International influenza vaccine experts are apparently not convinced that Canadian researchers have found a true link between getting a seasonal flu shot and catching swine flu.
The consensus that emerged from a World Health Organization teleconference Friday on the controversial data seemed to be that the Canadian findings are likely due to some confounding factor or factors in the data themselves and may not reflect a real increased risk, according to a WHO official who helped pull together the meeting.
"From a WHO point of view, the fact that the findings are not replicated in other countries I think is reassuring for us that this is an outlier, if you like, the unexpected findings that are coming out of Canada," said David Wood, co-ordinator of the quality, safety and standards team of WHO's department of immunization, vaccines and biologicals.
"Most people are still looking at this as some sort of undetected confounding in the data, that for some reason is giving the results that are there."
In an interview from Geneva, Wood was diplomatic. But when pressed, he did admit most experts on the call didn't seem to believe that the unpublished study, based on data from British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario, had found a true link between getting a seasonal flu vaccine and having an increased risk of coming down with a mild case of H1N1 flu.
"Well, yeah," he said. "It's a totally unexpected finding."
"So I think people do then try to think: 'Well, why is this happening? Are there some effects that are just not being detected that are really behind this?' Because it is an unexpected finding. That's the way people tend to think."
The work, which is said to be being considered for publication by a medical journal, contributed to decisions by most provinces and territories to stagger or delay their seasonal flu shot efforts this fall.
Instead of launching full-fledged seasonal flu vaccine programs in October, most have announced they will offer seasonal shots in October only to seniors - who aren't currently at high risk from the pandemic H1N1 virus - and residents of long-term care facilities. After pandemic vaccination efforts are completed, most of those provinces plan to offer seasonal vaccine more broadly.
A couple of jurisdictions - Quebec and Nunavut - will wait until after they've completed their pandemic vaccination efforts before offering seasonal flu shots. At the other end of the spectrum, New Brunswick is going ahead with its regular seasonal flu shot campaign before offering pandemic flu shots.
The Canadian findings, which are reportedly mirrored in data from Manitoba as well, suggest that people who got a flu shot last fall were twice as likely as people who didn't to contract swine flu. But the association, if it is real, is to mild disease. There is no evidence that people who got seasonal flu shots are more prone to develop severe illness if they catch the new H1N1 virus.
--
Click HERE to read the rest of the article.
There is some interesting data suggesting that keeping your vitamin D level optimal will prevent colds, flu and in particular H1N1 (swine Flu). The Canadians are taking the data very seriously and starting studies to see if Vitamin D can prevent Flu
Here are links to two interesting articles:
August 2009-Vitamin D3 deficiency and its role in influenza
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs026/1102452079631/archive/1102685428884.html
Sept 2009-More on Vitamin D3 and influenza
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs026/1102452079631/archive/1102728693089.html
If these links don’t work you can go to www.vitaminD3world.com and click on ‘In the news” to find the articles.
I am more inclined to believe what Canada is saying over the WHO on this one. The WHO is vaccine obsessed, and will inoculate anything that doesn't run away fast enough, often downplaying bad reactions and other vaccine problems. Canada with it's single payer health care system is mostly interested in avoiding costs of caring for many very sick people when prevention can be done for less.
The problem is this. Can you trust your government to be free from the influence of the companies that want to sell millions of flu shots?
The pharmacuetical companies that make the flu shots are major campaign contributors. And, in the US, the predictable reaction to flu scares in the media has been to spend large amounts of taxpayer money buying up large quantities of these vaccines.
The question is this, if the study is accurate, and the large data source that it is based upon says that it likely is accurate, could you trust your government to cost the companies that make the vaccines millions of dollars by canceling flu shots. Or, would the government officials who've just gotten big checks from these companies in the last campaign instead force an 'all is well' message out.
The problem with corruption is the lack of trust it creates. When you have a corrupt political system where the candidates with the most money always win and where millions of dollars flow to candidates as bribes/contributions from companies that want something from the government, the problem then is that you can't possibly trust the government to be uncorrupted.
What you want is a government that you know is so free of corruption and bias that you can trust what it says on an important issue like this. We don't have that today.
The opponents of public funding of political campaigns always scream about how awful it is to give tax money to politicians. But, if the politicians had all been elected with public money, then you'd have a better chance of believing that what they say on an issue like these flu shots is the best advice for the nation ... instead of the best advice for the stock price of their contributors.
Ann-Cathrin Engwall a Swedish PhD in molecular cell biology has suggested that the reason for these new findings could be that the cell-mediated generated immunity is not as well developed due to continous flu vaccination programmes which tend to prevent natural immunization. Several components of different influenza viruses could be recognizes as similar or the same and thus cause a cell-mediated immune response even if the virus is categorized as "new".
This is of course not what pro mass vaccination people want to here. Therefore even in Sweden where the want to vaccinate the whole population they try to "hush" conclusions like that.
Post a Comment
<< Home