Working in an area such as influenza is a free ticket into science communication, a pathway aided amply by the amazing evolutionary powers of the virus; regular outbreaks keep the media engaged and the audience keen. Everyone has heard of flu, and they probably already have an opinion: 'I don't take the vaccine, it gives me the flu anyway.' 'Didn't the government waste loads of money on that Ta...

The innate immune pathways induced by adjuvants required to increase adaptive responses to influenza subunit vaccines are not well characterized. We profiled different TLR-independent (MF59 and alum) and TLR-dependent (CpG, resiquimod, and Pam3CSK4) adjuvants for the ability to increase the immunogenicity to a trivalent influenza seasonal subunit vaccine and to tetanus toxoid (TT) in mouse. Alt...

The influenza A nucleoprotein (NP) is an attractive target for avian flu vaccine development because of its high conversancy in the evolutionary chain of the virus. Here we identified two novel HLA-A*0201 restricted NP epitopes, named H5N1 NP373-381 AMDSNTLEL (NP373) and NP458-466 FQGRGVFEL (NP458), using computational bioinformatic analysis. The NP peptides showed a high binding affinity to HL...

The aim of this study was to compare the number of inactivated-influenza vaccine-related spontaneous abortion and stillbirth (SB) reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database during three consecutive flu seasons beginning 2008/2009 and assess the relative fetal death reports associated with the two-vaccine 2009/2010 season. The VAERS database was searched for reports o...

Seasonal flu vaccine is recommended as the best protection for cancer patients against influenza infection. Recent and experimental data in silico suggest that antibodies elicited with influenza vaccine could activate bradykinin receptor B2-associated signaling pathway, which is also involved in cell proliferation and migration of tumor cells. These results point to an urgent need for the ree...

Background: Absence from work for health reasons is known as “sickness absenteeism”. Frequent sick leave is a major concern to any organization, especially hospitals. Objective: This study analyzed the extent and causes of sickness absenteeism in a teaching hospital and evaluated its corelation with demographic and occupational factors. Meth...

Early each calendar year, experts assemble to reformulate the trivalent vaccine that protects people against influenza viruses anticipated to circulate in the northern hemisphere during the next season, designating appropriate antigens based on what seems to be circulating locally and in the opposite hemisphere. This past February, members of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory comm...

BACKGROUND It is an important goal to vaccinate a high proportion of health care providers (HCPs) against influenza, to prevent transmission to patients. Different aspects of how a HCP vaccination campaign is conducted may be linked to different vaccination rates. We sought to characterize organizational factors and practices that were associated with vaccination campaign success among six site...

BACKGROUND Flu vaccination in otherwise healthy infants and young children is important to prevent severe disease, as well as to control epidemic spread of influenza infection. AIMS To examine the safety and immunogenicity of a paediatric presentation of a purified, inactivated, triton split influenza vaccine. METHODS Two doses of the vaccine, provided in prefilled syringes of 0.25 ml, were...