FDA Rules for Vaccine Indications Should be Revised

According to researchers, the Varicella vaccine and the Streptococcus pneumonia vaccine can be safely given at the same time; this is in contradiction with an established FDA recommendation.

Hung Fu Tseng and colleagues at Southern California Kaiser Permanente in Pasadena, have known that the two vaccines when taken together could no more lead to herpes zoster. On the contrary, the FDA recommendation in 2009 says that a patient should be given between 30 days and a year after giving another vaccine to avoid herpes zoster.

The researchers’ findings “provide no indication that this recommendation could compromise the immune response that is necessary to protect against herpes zoster.” This new findings is significant and notable because the FDA recommendation “poses higher administrative costs to patients, if they have to show up two different times for appointments.” This actually gives the patients less costs and fewer risks for herpes zoster.

For the study, the researchers looked at the electronic health records of patients from Southern California Kaiser Permanente of about 3.4 million people. From the data, a number of 7,189 patients were assessed having the age 60 or older who got both vaccines within a day and compared these to a control group of 7,179 patients. Within the study period, the results show 114 incidents of herpes – including 56 from the uncontrolled group and 58 from the controlled.

With the new findings, the researchers argued that the FDA recommendation in 2009 gave the patients an “increase in the already challenging task of delivering the recommended vaccines to older adults.”

 

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