Influenza is an important and often poorly controlled cause of morbidity, mortality, and healthcare burden among children. Multiple studies have established that annual influenza vaccination for children prevents a significant number of influenza infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Abt Global, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and our subcontractor Children’s Hospital of Boston, used a case-control design to evaluate the effectiveness of seasonal and 2009 H1N1 vaccine in preventing laboratory-confirmed influenza infection associated with admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) among children aged 6 months to 17 years during the 2010-2011 influenza season. 

The study’s secondary objectives were to:

• Identify factors that may mitigate the course and severity of outcomes of influenza among vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals;
• Identify non-influenza sources of infections and co-infections in ICU patients aged 6 months to 17 years, and to assess how infecting organism type or presence of co-infection influences outcomes in comparison to infection with influenza; and
• Assess specificity and sensitivity of alternative sampling sites and methods for detection of influenza and other pathogens among children aged 6 months to 17 years in ICUs.

Read more about this research:
Effectiveness of influenza vaccine against life-threatening RT-PCR-confirmed influenza illness in U.S. children, 2010-2012, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Ferdinands, J.M., Olsho, L.E.W., Agan, A.A., Bhat, N., Sullivan, R.M., Hall, M., Mourani, P.M., Thompson, M., & Randolph, A.G. (2014).
 
Variability in IRBs regarding parental acceptance of passive consent. Pediatrics, Higgerson, R.A., Olsho, L.E.W., Christie, L.M., Rehder, K., Doksum, T., Gedeit, R., Giuliano, J.S., Brennan, B., Wendlandt, R., & Randolph, A.G. (2014).