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High-dose influenza vaccine shows increased immune response among adults 65 years of age and older

28 Oct 2008 - Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis Group, announced that an investigational high-dose influenza vaccine demonstrated increased immune responses among adults 65 years of age and older compared with the standard influenza vaccine. The candidate high-dose intramuscular formulation of the influenza vaccine is being developed by sanofi pasteur. The results were reported at the 48th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC)/Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) 46th annual meeting.
 
The Phase III study of almost 4,000 people 65 years of age and older compared the high-dose influenza vaccine with the standard inactivated influenza vaccine formulated for the 2006-2007 season. The key finding is that the new high-dose vaccine increased the immune responses to all three influenza strains compared with standard vaccine in the study population. An important additional observation was that the increased immune response was also observed in the potentially more vulnerable subset of study participants who had no measurable circulating protective antibodies before receiving their annual influenza vaccine.
 
In the randomized double-blind study conducted at 30 centers throughout the United States, 2,575 people received the high-dose influenza vaccine and 1,262 received the standard influenza vaccine. The standard influenza vaccine contained 15µg of hemagglutinin (HA) of each of three influenza strains, and the high-dose vaccine contained four times as much, 60µg HA per strain. Both vaccines contained two influenza type A strains (H1N1 and H3N2) and one influenza type B strain.