Vaccines

Los Angeles County's free H1N1 flu clinics opened last week amid public health officials' promises to aggressively vaccinate people at highest risk, especially the uninsured. Instead, overwhelmed clinic staff began vaccinating many people who were not supposed to be first in line for protection, officials said Tuesday. "We thought it was important to get to as many people as quickly as possible," said Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, the county's director of public health. "We were assuming that the private sector was going to be getting a lot more vaccine a lot faster than they did."

In years past, the nation's attempts to prevent flu-related deaths have focused on limiting transmission of the virus through widespread vaccination programs. This year, with school starting up well before a vaccine for the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus will be available, there will be little that can slow the spread of the virus for the next few months.

Virtually all communities in California now have an abundance of H1N1 vaccine, the state health officer said Thursday. Dr. Mark Horton said in a conference call that California has received about 15 million doses of the vaccine, approximately two-thirds of the supply the state is expected to get of the H1N1 vaccine this season. Almost all jurisdictions are reporting that they have enough vaccine to inoculate the general public, instead of just the priority groups most at risk for H1N1, also known as the swine flu. Numerous production delays last year affected communities nationwide, leading to long lines and complaints of poorly run vaccination clinics until supply caught up with demand.

Children whose parents refuse to let them be vaccinated for chickenpox are nine times as likely as vaccinated children to develop chickenpox that requires medical attention, researchers reported Monday. Although the conclusion may seem self-evident, it reflects a growing problem with childhood immunizations, said epidemiologist Jason M. Glanz of Kaiser Permanente's Institute for Health Research in Denver, the lead author of the report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. The Merck & Co. vaccine, called Gardasil, can prevent up to 70% of the 10,000 cases of cervical cancer diagnosed in the U.S. each year. It was approved for use in females ages 9 through 26. A three-shot treatment, administered over six months, costs about $360, making it one of the most expensive vaccines available.

A controversial prostate cancer vaccine that previously had been rejected by the Food and Drug Administration improves survival of patients with the advanced form of the disease more than existing treatments and should be brought to market, researchers said Tuesday.

Health authorities here have launched a massive vaccination campaign as a yellow fever outbreak has panicked residents and sparked fierce criticism of the government's handling of the crisis. Almost 1 million people have been vaccinated in this landlocked nation of 6.5 million, officials said. An aircraft carrying 2 million additional doses of vaccine from France touched down Sunday, local media reported.

Vaccines to help people recover from such addictions as nicotine, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines now appear scientifically and medically achievable after doctors reported Monday that a vaccine to treat cocaine dependence had produced a large enough antibody response to reduce cocaine use in 38% of addicted individuals. Those results come on the heels of last week's announcement that the federal government would fund a large clinical trial of a nicotine vaccine based on earlier promising studies.

As the H1N1 influenza vaccine trickles into clinics and pharmacies over the next few weeks, public health officials and doctors desperately hope that pregnant women will be at the front of the line for the shot. Past influenza pandemics have proved that they're at increased risk for severe complications -- and they appear to be even more vulnerable to this new flu strain. On Thursday, a consortium of major medical groups, including the American Medical Assn., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, released a statement pleading with pregnant women to get both the H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines.

Los Angeles public health officials say they expect to receive the first shipments of H1N1 flu vaccine this week. Local clinics and doctor's offices will receive small shipments of the FluMist nasal spray vaccine as soon as Wednesday, according to a statement released Friday from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. "While the FluMist nasal spray vaccine may not be appropriate for everyone, we do encourage those who can receive this form of the vaccine to get it," said Jonathan E. Fielding, the county's director of public health.

U.S. researchers have developed a prototype vaccine that protects monkeys and mice against the emerging chikungunya virus, a major step toward the production of a vaccine for humans. Human trials could begin later this year. Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne virus that first appeared on Reunion Island off the eastern coast of Africa in 2005 and has spread to more than 18 countries, infecting millions. It is characterized by rash, a high fever and its most distinctive characteristic, a severe arthritis that can persist for years.

The British doctor whose suggestion of a link between the MMR shot and autism helped cause vaccination rates to plunge conducted his now-discredited research in a dishonest and irresponsible manner, medical authorities here concluded Thursday. It was the latest development in a long-running health controversy that has seen measles make a comeback among British children after being all but wiped out. The General Medical Council, Britain's medical regulator, found that Andrew Wakefield acted unethically in the way he collected blood samples from children and in his failure to disclose payments from lawyers representing parents who believed the vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella -- given as a single shot, referred to as the MMR vaccine -- had hurt their kids.

Vaccines that protect against severe disease and death from rotavirus infections in the United States and other developed countries work nearly as well in developing countries and should be widely employed there, researchers report today in two papers in the New England Journal of Medicine. Health authorities now have "another powerful weapon" to combat the disease, Dr. Mathuram Santosham of Johns Hopkins University wrote in an editorial accompanying the studies. Widespread use of the vaccines could save more than 2 million lives over the next decade, he said.

Virtually all communities in California now have an abundance of H1N1 vaccine, the state health officer said Thursday. Dr. Mark Horton said in a conference call that California has received about 15 million doses of the vaccine, approximately two-thirds of the supply the state is expected to get of the H1N1 vaccine this season. Almost all jurisdictions are reporting that they have enough vaccine to inoculate the general public, instead of just the priority groups most at risk for H1N1, also known as the swine flu. Numerous production delays last year affected communities nationwide, leading to long lines and complaints of poorly run vaccination clinics until supply caught up with demand.

Children whose parents refuse to let them be vaccinated for chickenpox are nine times as likely as vaccinated children to develop chickenpox that requires medical attention, researchers reported Monday. Although the conclusion may seem self-evident, it reflects a growing problem with childhood immunizations, said epidemiologist Jason M. Glanz of Kaiser Permanente's Institute for Health Research in Denver, the lead author of the report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

About three months ago, Samantha Slattery approached her nanny about getting the H1N1 flu vaccine. Slattery, 33, of Topanga, had a 5-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son. The baby was too little to be vaccinated, and Slattery wanted to avoid vaccinating her son. But nanny Blanca Duarte refused. Duarte, 47, said she was afraid the vaccine would make her sick; she had gotten ill after a flu vaccination years before. "For three weeks I could not work," Duarte said. "After that, I said no more."

Vaccine maker MedImmune has voluntarily recalled 13 lots of vaccine against the pandemic H1N1 influenza because they have lost some potency since they were manufactured, the company said Tuesday. "This is not a safety issue," Norman Baylor, director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at the Food and Drug Administration, said in a conference call. "All lots passed pre-release testing for safety, purity and potency. There has just been a slight decrease in potency." The 13 lots recalled involved 4.7 million doses of the intranasal vaccine, which is based on a live, weakened virus, but officials believe most of them were administered in October and November when the product would have still been at full potency.

Australian researchers have shown that a single dose of vaccine against pandemic H1N1 influenza can provide effective immunity against the swine flu virus in infants and children, a finding that, if corroborated, could help damp the spread of the virus by reducing the logistical complications associated with the currently recommended regimen of two doses. Immunizing children plays a crucial role in preventing widespread outbreaks of flu and other infectious diseases because schools and camps provide a fertile breeding ground for viruses, which then spread into the community.

Available doses of the vaccine against pandemic H1N1 influenza will top 100 million in the United States by today, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Thursday. The vaccine has become sufficiently plentiful, prompting at least 24 states and some other communities to lift restrictions and open distribution to everyone. And some pharmacies are starting to get the vaccine for general distribution. Earlier, supplies had been targeted at those most at risk, including children and pregnant women.

Vaccine manufacturer Sanofi-Aventis is recalling 800,000 doses of H1N1 vaccine meant for children younger than 3 because the influenza vaccine has lost potency since it was shipped from the factory. "This is non-safety-related, but is part of a routine quality assurance program," Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. There are now 94.6 million doses of vaccine available, "so this is not as big a deal as it might have been earlier," she said.