Conditions: Influenza
Keywords: Influenza Influenza Vaccines Vaccines, Attenuated Immunity, Mucosal
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 5
Healthy volunteers: yes

Brief summary:
The Live-Attenuated Influenza Vaccine (LAIV), also known as FluMist, has been shown to be effective in children but less effective in adults. Our hypothesis is that this relative failure is due to adults having enough anti-flu IgA antibody in nasal secretions to neutralize the weakened vaccine virus.

Detailed description:
This is a VA-based study to evaluate serum and nasal wash antibody responses to seasonal LAIV of healthy Veterans and VA employees between the ages of 20 and 49 years old.

Specific Aims

1. The primary aim of the study is to evaluate whether people with high mucosal IgA antibodies against flu have a lower immune response to the seasonal LAIV.
2. The secondary objective is to determine whether the nasal wash viral neutralization data predicts LAIV immunization failures.

Arms:
arm 1: Single intervention study- all participants will receive LAIV instead of injectable flu vaccine.

Interventions: intervention 1: Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: All participants will be given FluMist.

Protocol document: