The impact of seasonal influenza vaccine dose on homologous and heterologous immunity

Slides: https://www.andreashandel.com/presentations/

2022-09-10 12:46:16

Motivation

Current influenza vaccines are not that great.
Immunity following vaccination is especially low in older individuals.
An increase in dose (antigen) for the Fluzone vaccine has been shown to lead to somewhat better protection against the vaccine strains in older individuals.
It is unclear if the high dose (HD) vaccine leads to better protection against strains other than the vaccine strains.

Setup

Cohort of individuals who received Fluzone vaccine over multiple seasons.
Trivalent or quadrivalent standard dose (SD, 15µg) Fluzone vaccine was the default.
Individuals >=65 years were offered the high-dose (HD, 60µg) trivalent vaccine.
We evaluated immune response following vaccination, specifically antibodies as measured by hemagglutination inhibition assay (HAI).

Question: What is the impact of standard dose (SD) versus high dose (HD) vaccine on antibodies, especially against non-vaccine strains?

Study population

“Raw” data - homologous responses

“Raw” data - heterologous responses