Tamiflu Resistant H1N1 Vaccine Failures Raise Concerns

From: Recombinomics Commentary 16:53
March 24, 2009
Excerpt:

"Deb Brandt, a physician assistant at Rapid City Medical Center's Urgent Care, said that on Wednesday, the clinic checked in 106 people in 11 hours. There were cases of strep, mono and plenty of influenza. Three other Rapid City clinics report a similarly busy schedule.

"Brandt said about half of her patients who tested positive for influenza had their shots, but "most of the flu shots were early."

"The above comments suggest that 50% of the flu patients in the Rapid City area served by the medical center had been vaccinated this season, and the vaccine failed to prevent infection. This figure is alarming, since the vaccination rate of the population is likely much lower than 100%, so the failure rate in those receiving the vaccine would be much higher than 50%.

The article suggested that the high failure rate was due a reduction in antibody levels in vaccinated patients, but vaccines fail because the circulating virus evolves away from the vaccine strain."

And:

"Reports from Taiwan also indicated that vaccines failed in 70% of the H1N1 cases and Tamiflu resistant H1N1 dominated in collections after December, 2008.

Although vaccine failures in H1N1 have not been discussed in weekly reports from the CDC, a disclaimer was added in 2009, noting that cross reactivity with ferret reference sera was not always predictive of vaccine protection. This disclaimer came after failures had been reported in Asia."

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