Is It Time to Give Influenza Vaccine to Healthy Infants?

Abstract

Among the many respiratory viruses, influenza-virus has always stood out as different. Certainly, in adults, it is the most pathogenic. Not only did it cause in 1918–1919 one of the most deadly epidemics the world has ever seen, but also it routinely makes generally healthy adults miserable for about a week with a cough, fever, chills, and myalgias. It is the respiratory virus that predisposes patients most frequently to bacterial pneumonia. It is epidemiologically unique, since influenza A strains regularly change their antigenic coat, either by slow, mutation-driven, interpandemic drift or by a sudden, reassortment-driven shift. The latter presumably occurs . . .