Pharmaceutical companies are looking for new and better ways to produce flu vaccines. San Antonians are helping test these investigational shots.
Far more people are getting seasonal flu shots this year than ever before. They want to stay healthy with the wild card, H1N1 swine flu, out there to complicate things.
Flu shots have been made the same way for years, and not everyone can take them. “Currently vaccines are manufactured,” explained Kay Scroggins, RN, president of Clinical Trials of Texas. “They are grown in eggs which is an issue in that a lot of people are allergic to eggs, and therefore, they are not able to take the vaccines.”
Clinical Trials of Texas is conducting a study for people 60 and over, testing a flu shot made a different way. Healthy men and women are being recruited to roll up their sleeves and help test the investigational vaccine.
T.C. of San Antonio said he’s happy to get protection and help scientists find a better way to produce the shot. “I think it’s great because they need to be producing this stuff as fast as they can,” the volunteer stated. “It’s actually creating quite a panic out t here. I think it’ll be good that there’s more sources, more ways of actually producing it.”
Study volunteers will take two bloods tests (one before, one after) to see if it’s effective in providing protection.
“If you have an immune response,” Scroggins described, “which means that you respond to the vaccine and your body becomes able to fight off the flu, then your body creates antibodies. And antibodies can be measured in the bloodstream.”
People 60 and older are always encouraged to get the seasonal flu vaccine. Now, those folks can help test the next generation of protection.
Clinical Trials of Texas is one of five sites around the country testing the new seasonal flu vaccine. For more information about volunteering for the study, you can contact them at 866-640-3636.
