FluMist found to reduce childhood infections by 55 percent

It was not that long ago that reported that Gaitherburg, Maryland-based Medimmune had won Food and Drug Administartion approval for a refrigerated version of its nasal spray flu vaccine FluMist. That was critical because keeping stockpiles handy is critical because an epidemic would swiftly swamp suppliers, yet many places such as schools and pharmacies cannot keep medication that must be frozen in storage. Now we can report another success sure to get the product into schools: a study published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine found that children from six months to five years old had 55 percent fewer cases of flu when they were protected by the nasal spray vaccine rather than shots. The vaccine, we should note, is not yet approved for use with children under age five, and the study found that among children younger than one year old there was an increased health risk — particularly asthma — compared to the shot.

The study puts Medimmune in the catbird seat as rumors circulate that Gaithersburg neighbor Iomai, which recently received a $128 million contract from the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a flu vaccine patch, would partner with the company in a distribution deal. That idea remains unresolved, but Dr. Robert B. Belshe, one of the researchers on the study, offered this marketing suggestion for the FluMist that might work equally well with Iomai’s patch: “You don’t have to have someone trained to give injections, so you could do mass vaccinations at schools. As far as I’m concerned, you should dispense these in machines — you put in your $10 or $20, out it comes, and you squirt your own nose. But the C.D.C. and the F.D.A. don’t like it when I say things like that.”

-read more in Donald J. McNeil’s New York Times report