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Pediatric Practices Urged to Pre-Book Flu Vaccines for 2025-’26 Season Following AAP Recommendations, FDA Strain Selection
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is urging annual influenza vaccination for all children ages 6 months and older this fall as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made its vaccine strain recommendations.
AAP recommendations for the 2025-’26 season are the same as this season’s. Any licensed influenza vaccine appropriate by age and health status can be used for vaccination in children and adolescents. The AAP does not have a preference for any influenza vaccine product for children and adolescents with no contraindications to influenza vaccination and for whom more than one licensed, age-appropriate product is available.
“Influenza vaccine is the best way to protect children against severe and life-threatening influenza illness,” said Kristina A. Bryant, M.D., FAAP, a member of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases.
The AAP will publish its influenza policy statement in Pediatrics later this year but released recommendations now so pediatricians can pre-book vaccines. The AAP’s recommendations come as the FDA made its recommendations on Mar. 13 to vaccine manufacturers for the virus strains to be used in flu vaccines for the 2025-’26 season. FDA recommendations are similar to last year’s strain selection.
Why Fewer Kids Are Getting Vaccinated in Florida — and How That Could Affect Outbreaks
Fewer Florida parents are fully vaccinating their kindergartners against measles, polio, tetanus and other highly contagious diseases that can get people seriously ill, federal and state data show.
Florida’s slowdown in kindergarten vaccinations, which began after COVID-19 arrived five years ago, mirrors a nationwide decrease in a post-pandemic world where politics, misinformation and personal freedom have muddied vaccination guidance and reduced trust in what the family doctor recommends.
In the 2023-2024 school year, coverage among U.S. kindergartners decreased for all reported vaccines compared to the year before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, nearly all 67 counties saw a decline in childhood immunizations among kindergartners since COVID-19 came in 2020, state data shows. Meanwhile, religious exemptions to vaccinations are on the rise in Florida.
Generation Xanax: The Dark Side of America’s Wonder Drug
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Two years after she started taking Xanax, Dana Bare began having panic attacks like never before. Her memory started slipping. Her husband had to remind her how to make a sandwich. Bare’s ailments cycled her through emergency rooms and puzzled specialists, some of whom thought she was mentally ill or had cancer. No one knew what to do other than up her Xanax dose, to 2 milligrams a day at one point.
The popular pills had been a blessing at first when her general practitioner prescribed them for mild insomnia more than a decade ago. Bare was a busy mother of five running a charity based in Smith County, Tenn. Xanax helped sleep come easy.
Over time, though, her nervous system developed a debilitating physical dependence on the drug. When she tried to quit after five years, crippling symptoms consumed her. “Brain zaps” hit her like electric shocks. Shower water jolted her so badly that she would suffer hourslong panic attacks and at times writhe in pain until she passed out.
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Former CDC Director Argues for Stronger, Nationwide Guidance on Infant Measles Vaccine Dose
The former director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called for stronger, nationwide guidance on infant vaccine doses for measles prevention in a new opinion paper published Mar. 15.
In the face of a growing measles outbreak — with more than 200 cases confirmed in western Texas — the federal health agency issued an alert on March 7 saying parents in the outbreak area should consider getting their children an early third dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The CDC currently recommends people receive two vaccine doses, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. The third early dose would occur starting at 6 months old.
Texas health officials have also recommended early vaccination for infants living in outbreak areas. However, in the new opinion paper published in the medical journal JAMA, Dr. Rochelle Walensky and her co-authors say the CDC should issue a more direct nationwide recommendation.
New Chickenpox Vaccine Study Launches Amid Ongoing Upstate Outbreak
Tribe Clinical Research in Greenville has launched its latest vaccine trial study; this time centered around chickenpox as the Upstate and surrounding areas are currently experiencing a mild outbreak.
Tribe Clinical Research medical director Dr. Scott Dobson said this chickenpox immunity trial is for kids 12-15 months old. They would get one dose of a chickenpox vaccine to check their immunity. Dobson said this trial uses a vaccine that is the same as the one that is currently routinely administered, but just with a different sponsor.
Dobson said the elements in the vaccine have been around for decades, and vaccinations in that age group are critical as people could be walking around contagious with chickenpox for weeks and not show any signs or symptoms.
NIH-Sponsored Trial of Lassa Vaccine Opens
National Institutes of Health reported:
A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored clinical trial of a candidate vaccine to prevent Lassa fever has begun enrolling participants at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore. Lassa fever is a viral hemorrhagic disease that can be fatal and that causes permanent hearing loss in up to one-third of those who contract it.
Lassa virus is spread by rodents, known as multimammate rats, that are native to many countries in West Africa. The virus can also be spread from person to person. Currently, there are no specific drug treatments or vaccines for Lassa fever. NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is sponsoring the Phase 1 trial.
“The candidate vaccine being tested in this trial was developed by an NIH-supported research team at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia,” said NIAID Director Jeanne Marrazzo, M.D., MPH. “The progression of this candidate from the lab to a first-in-humans clinical trial is a promising step towards a vaccine to prevent Lassa fever.”
