Dr. Natasha Halasa, MD, MPH

High vs. Standard Dose Flu Vaccine

for Transplant Patients

Influenza virus is a significant pathogen in pediatric solid organ transplant (SOT) recipients. However, these individuals respond poorly to standard-dose (SD) inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV). Recent studies have investigated two strategies to overcome poor immune responses in SOT recipients: (1) administration of high-dose (HD)-IIV compared to SD-IIV and (2) two doses of SD-IIV compared to one dose of SD-IIV in the same influenza season. One study compared HD-IIV vs. SD-IIV in adult SOT recipients and noted that HD-IIV was safe and more immunogenic; however, the median post-transplant period was 38 months. A phase I pediatric study comparing a single dose of HD-IIV vs. SD-IIV was safe with higher immunogenicity, but the study was limited by small sample size and median post-transplant vaccine administration was 26 months. In another phase II trial of adult SOT recipients, two doses of SD-IIV one month apart compared to one-dose of SD-IIV revealed modestly increased immunogenicity when given at a median of 18 months post-transplant. Therefore, these studies lack both evaluation in the early post-transplant period and substantive pediatric populations. Additionally, the administration of two-doses of HD-IIV in the same influenza season has not been evaluated in pediatric SOT recipients. Thus, the optimal immunization strategy for pediatric SOT recipients less than 24 months post-transplant is unknown. In addition, immunologic predictors and correlates of influenza vaccine immunogenicity in pediatric SOT recipients have not been well-defined. The central hypothesis of our proposal is that pediatric SOT recipients 1-23 months post-transplant who receive two doses of HD-quadrivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (QIV) will have similar safety but higher Hemagglutination Inhibition (HAI) geometric mean titers (GMTs) to influenza antigens compared to pediatric SOT recipients receiving two doses of SD-QIV.