CDC tweaking flu vaccine for better protection
Special diets, supplements not always helpful for kids with autism
Having acknowledged that the 2014-2015 flu vaccine was mismatched to the circulating influenza strains, U.S. health officials have ramped up next season’s shots for broader protection.
Flu-vaccine makeup is determined months in advance so that manufacturers have time to make the millions of doses needed. Components of the coming “2015-16 season vaccine have been changed to more optimally match circulating viruses,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its June 5 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
There also is a version of the flu vaccine called quadrivalent flu vaccine, designed to protect against four flu viruses; two influenza A viruses and two influenza B viruses.
Last year, no one saw until summer that the H3N2 strain would predominate, said CDC epidemiologist Lynnette Brammer.
Work on the vaccine had begun in February, she said. “[The H3N2 strain] came on so fast, and there wasn’t time for it to be included in the vaccine,” she explained.
As a result, flu shots were only 18.6 percent effective against the predominant H3N2 strain, she said.
Shots for the coming flu season will contain two influenza type A viruses -- H1N1, which caused the 2009 pandemic flu, and last year’s virulent H3N2 -- plus an influenza B component, according to the CDC researchers.
These are the strains that appear to be circulating in the United States and around the world, and they’re expected to be the main strains in the 20152016 flu season, Brammer said.
But there are no guarantees, she cautioned.
“Influenza activity is unpredictable in terms of what virus will predominate and the exact timing of the season, and both of these things, along with others, can have a large impact on season severity,” she said. “Therefore, we can’t know at this point what the next flu season will look like.” Well-intentioned parents of children with autism may think that special diets or supplements can help their child, but a new study suggests that often these efforts lead to problems.
As the researchers explain, many children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are picky eaters, and parents may direct them to nutritional supplements, or gluten- or casein-free diets.
However, the study reported June 4 in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that these regimens leave children still deficient in some nutrients, such as calcium. On the other hand, special diets and supplements can cause children to take in excessive amounts of other nutrients, such as vitamin A, the researchers said.
“Each patient needs to be individually assessed for potential nutritional deficiencies or excess,” study lead researcher Patricia Stewart, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., said in a journal news release. One other expert agreed. “Children with an autism spectrum disorder are not very different nutritionally from nonASD children,” said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York, in New Hyde Park, N.Y.
“Giving children with an autism spectrum disorder a multivitamin/mineral supplement will not correct many of the nutritional deficiencies Stories courtesy: seen in these children,” he added, “and may in fact lead to excess amounts of some nutrients in the bloodstream.”
The new study involved 368 children aged 2 to 11 years who were treated at five different Autism Speaks specialty centers. Autism Speaks is a nonprofit organization that sponsors autism research and conducts awareness and outreach activities.
The study participants had all been diagnosed with autism, Asperger’s syndrome or another so-called “pervasive developmental disorder.” The children’s caregivers kept a three-day food diary, which recorded the amounts of food the kids ate as well as the drinks and supplements they took.
After analyzing the children’s food diaries, the researchers found the kids with an ASD were consuming amounts of nutrients that were similar to other children who did not have autism. They also had the same deficiencies often seen in the general population.
In addition, even among those who took supplements, up to 55 percent of the children with an ASD remained deficient in calcium, while up to 40 percent didn’t get enough vitamin D, the study found.
The kids on the gluten-free and casein-free diet ate more magnesium and vitamin E, but they were still deficient in calcium, Stewart’s team found.
Much of these special diets and supplements are unnecessary, the authors said, because even