Important note: Information in this article was accurate in January 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, January 25, 1999
Daniel J. DeNoon, Senior Editor
Yearly flu vaccinations are widely recommended for people with HIV infection. The vaccinations are associated with transient increases in HIV viremia, but no adverse affects of vaccination on disease progression have yet been identified.
A Dutch research team now reports that flu vaccinations are far more likely to benefit HIV(+) patients who still have relatively intact immune systems.
Utrecht University Hospital researcher C.A. Benne and colleagues used a neutralization enzyme immunoassay (N-EIA) to measure serum antibody titers to H1N1 (A/Taiwan/1/86) and H3N2 (Beijing/353/89) viruses in 51 HIV infected individuals and in 10 healthy controls.
For the Taiwan H1N1 and Beijing H3N2 strains, adequate neutralization responses were seen, respectively, in 46 and 14 percent of the HIV infected patients with CD4 counts <200 cells/(micro)L; in 83 and 78 percent of the HIV infected patients with CD4 counts >=200 cells/(micro)L; and in 100 and 89 percent of the healthy controls.
"At present, the benefits of protection against influenza virus infection seem to outweigh the yet-to-be-established negative effects of vaccination on the progression of HIV infection," Benne et al. wrote.
The researchers reported their findings in the journal Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology ("Comparison of Neutralizing and Hemagglutination-Inhibiting Antibody Responses to Influenza A Virus Vaccination of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Individuals," Clin Diag Lab Immunol, 1999;5(1):114-7).
The corresponding author for this study is C.A. Benne, Regional Public Health Laboratory Groningen, Van Ketwich Verschuurlaan 92, NL- 9721 SW Groningen, The Netherlands. Phone: 31-50-5215100. Fax: 31- 50-5271488.
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