Bedret barnevaksinasjon og beredskap mot sesong og pandemisk influensa: betydning av cellulær immunitet

Summary

Since influenza may pave the way for pneumococcal infections, a cheap influenza vaccine might be a better choice than conjugated pneumococcal vaccines to protect infants and children in low-income countries against lethal pneumonia. The project aims at assessing the prevalence of past pneumococcal infections and influenza in rural and urban areas of Ethiopia with use of techniques to determine cellular immune protection against new influenza strains. The same techniques will be used to evaluate the effect on infants and children in Norway by vaccinating their mothers against pandemic influenza during pregnancy, and by a set of vaccine studies against influenza in adult volunteers, e.g. a nasal whole virus vaccine, a conventional split vaccine, a pandemic H1N1 vaccine, and two pandemic avian vaccines. Along with studies from Bangladesh, using a nasal live attenuated virus vaccine, the results may help defining formulations for universal vaccines against influenza.