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trvrb / flux

Integrating influenza antigenic dynamics with molecular evolution
http://bedford.io/papers/bedford-flux/
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Antigenic drift wording #9

Closed trvrb closed 11 years ago

trvrb commented 11 years ago

The first paragraph says: "A large proportion of the disease burden of influenza stems from antigenic drift; it is why vaccines remain only transiently effective." In fact, influenza vaccines are probably relatively ineffective for a number of reasons, and there is no correlation between vaccine match and efficacy (although the data is admittedly noisy), as discussed on page 28 of http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/files/80/ccivi%20report.pdf So it might be more accurate to say that "antigenic drift is probably one reason why influenza vaccines are only transiently effective."

trvrb commented 11 years ago

We have revised this paragraph to make it clear that antigenic drift causes efficacy to decline over time, but that there are other factors that generally limit influenza vaccine efficacy.