News in brief - March 14, 2011

HHS awards $215 million to escalate vaccine distribution - Vitamin D deficiency linked to allergies

HHS awards $215 million to escalate vaccine distribution

The Dept. of Health and Human Services wants to speed up and increase vaccine distribution during seasonal influenza outbreaks and pandemics. The agency awarded contracts to two companies on Feb. 28 totaling $215 million to develop new types of vaccines and new vaccine manufacturing methods.

Novavax of Rockville, Md., received a three-year $97 million contract, and VaxInnate of Cranbury, N.J., received a three-year $117.9 million contract. Both deals can be extended for two more years.

"The 2009 H1N1 pandemic demonstrated the need for technologies that can provide vaccines more rapidly," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said. "These next-generation flu vaccines hold the potential to be even more effective and to make the first and last doses of vaccine available sooner than existing flu vaccines by weeks and months, which can save more lives during a pandemic as well as during seasonal flu outbreaks."

Vitamin D deficiency linked to allergies

Children and teenagers who are deficient in vitamin D are more likely to have allergies than those who get enough of the vitamin, says a study published online Feb. 17 in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in Bronx, N.Y., analyzed data on 3,136 children and adolescents and 3,454 adults from the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Allergic sensitization was measured using serum Immunoglobulin E levels (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21329969).

Children and teenagers who were vitamin D deficient were more likely to show sensitization to 11 of 17 allergens, including food and environmental allergens such as ragweed and oak. A similar association was not found in adults.

More research is needed to confirm the findings, which show only an association and do not prove that vitamin D deficiency causes allergies in young people, said Michal Melamed, MD, MHS, senior study author and assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.