A flu shot is 50 percent more effective than nasal spray vaccine in preventing seasonal influenza in healthy adults, a new University of Michigan study shows.
The U-M School of Public Health study compared the effectiveness of a vaccine that uses an inactivated influenza virus with a vaccine that uses a live but weakened virus, said Arnold Monto, professor of epidemiology at the UM School of Public Health. The inactivated vaccine is delivered by injection, the live vaccine by nasal spray.
“This study now establishes that the flu shot is more effective than the nasal spray vaccines in healthy adults in preventing seasonal influenza,” Monto said. The differences in protection were demonstrated for the A (H3N2) viruses, the seasonal strains which cause the most severe disease.
The findings of the study especially are interesting because a UM epidemiology professor developed FluMist, a popular nasal spray.
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