A Comparison of 2 Influenza Vaccine Schedules in 6- to 23-Month-Old Children

Abstract

When the spring and fall influenza vaccines had the same 3 antigenic components, the early vaccine schedule resulted in similar immunogenicity and reactogenicity compared with the standard schedule. When the vaccine components do not change between years, initiating influenza vaccine in the spring at the time of routine office visits would facilitate full immunization of children against influenza earlier in the season.

Systematic review of fever, febrile convulsions and serious adverse events following administration of inactivated trivalent influenza vaccines in children

“…Of the 4,372 studies initially identified (Figure), 18 RCTs [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39], 14 non-randomised clinical trials [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53], and six observational studies [54][55][56][57][58][59] were eligible for inclusion. The clinical trial registry search yielded 12 additional relevant studies (five RCTs and seven nonrandomised trials).…”

“…Classification of fever varied across studies, but a majority of studies [22,25,27,[29][30][31]34,35,37,38] provided data on fever ≥ 38 °C. We used these studies for meta-analysis of fever rate and one additional study [39], where we assumed a fever definition of ≥ 38 °C based on two similar studies by the same lead author [31,35].…”

“…Five studies were assessed as being at low risk of bias [26,31,[33][34][35]. Ten studies had medium risk of bias [22,24,25,[27][28][29][30]32,38,39], and three studies had high risk [23,36,37]. Sensitivity analyses limited only to low-risk studies were not feasible; there were too few studies, and two did not use a fever definition of ≥ 38 °C.…”

“…The pooled proportion estimate of fever was 6.7% (95% confidence interval (CI): 3.0-11.8) after first dose of TIV based on five eligible RCTs [22,29,31,38,39]. None of these RCTs had a high risk of bias.…”

“…RCTs using Sanofi Pasteur products (Vaxigrip, Fluzone) [22][23][24][25][26]29,[31][32][33]36,38], GSK's Fluarix [27,32,37], and Novartis's Agrippal [28] were examined (Table 3). Overall, fever rates were comparable between these brands of vaccine.…”