The future of flu prevention: The rise of adjuvanted vaccinations

Despite apocalyptic warnings about a global pandemic, it’s still all-too-easy to underestimate influenza. Even in non-pandemic years, influenza accounts for about 1 in 10 admissions and deaths in hospital from respiratory causes in England.¹

Unfortunately, influenza vaccines are generally less efficient in the elderly than they are in younger people.² Indeed, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) remarked recently that conventional inactivated influenza vaccines ‘showed no significant effectiveness’ in people aged at least 75 years. In October, the JCVI agreed that using an influenza jab that includes an adjuvant to boost effectiveness would be clinically and cost effective in people aged at least 65 years.³