BACKGROUND The burden of influenza is increasingly recognised in Africa. The WHO recommends introducing influenza vaccination to high-risk groups: pregnant women, children <5 years, and the elderly. The Gambia currently has no influenza vaccination policy, but the NASIMMUNE study, a clinical trial of intranasal live attenuated influenza vaccines (LAIV) in young children provided an opportunity ...

Avian influenza viruses remain a major pandemic threat. In response to this threat, a number of pandemic vaccines have been developed. The objective of this paper is to review and summarize data from preclinical and clinical evaluation of Russian live attenuated influenza vaccines (LAIVs) against pandemic influenza based on cold-adapted A/Leningrad/134/17/57 (H2N2) master donor virus (MDV). The...

A school-located mass vaccination program can enable rapid vaccination of a large number of students while minimizing disruption of their school activities. During 3 consecutive influenza seasons beginning in 2005, the Knox County Health Department conducted school-located mass vaccination clinics using live attenuated influenza vaccine. Overall, the proportion of elementary schoolchildren vacc...

Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease that primarily affects Asia, Africa, South America, and the Mediterranean basin. Despite extensive efforts to develop an effective prophylactic vaccine, no promising vaccine is available yet. However, recent advancements in computational vaccinology on the one hand and genome sequencing approaches on the other have generated new hopes in vaccine development....

The United Kingdom is introducing a universal annual influenza vaccination programme for children. Live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) effectiveness (VE) against laboratory-confirmed influenza hospitalisation in 2 to 6 year-olds in England was measured in 2015/16 using the screening method. VE adjusted for age, geography and month was 54.5% (95% confidence interval (CI): 31.5% to 68.4%) fo...

Annual influenza vaccination is recommended for all persons aged ≥6 months. Two vaccine types are approved in the United States, injectable inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV) and live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV), which is administered intranasally. Influenza vaccine typicaly becomes widely available beginning in late summer or early fall. IIV has a standard expiration date of June 30 f...

The test-negative design (TND) is an efficient form of case-control study commonly applied to influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) estimation. TND validity is predicated on the core assumption that the intervention (vaccine) has no effect on other non-targeted aetiologies resulting in similar illness/disease. Here we verify this core assumption and compare efficacy estimates derived by the TND ...

BACKGROUND Influenza is an uncontrolled epidemic disease that is vaccine preventable. New recommendations for universal immunization present a challenge to the implementation of vaccine delivery. This field trial examines the effectiveness of school-based clinics for vaccine delivery before an epidemic caused by 3 new influenza virus variants not contained in the vaccine. METHODS Live attenua...

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is an economically important swine disease that has devastated the swine industry worldwide. Vaccination with live attenuated vaccine or inactivated vaccine is the main treatment to control PRRS. However, the disadvantages such as virulence resumption of the attenuated vaccine and low immunogenicity of the inactivated vaccine call for a more ...