It was suggested by the study done in Germany that an adjuvanted vaccine proved effective against the pandemic H1N1 virus. This vaccine was very effective in teenagers and younger adults, whereas in older people it was fairly effective. This report was published in Eurosurveillance yesterday.

Data was collected of vaccinated and unvaccinated people who had definite cases of H1N1. A team from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin checked the vaccine effectiveness and saw that in people aged 14 to 59 years had 97% effectiveness whereas the ones 60 and older had 83% effectiveness.

The findings were written by the researchers that overestimated vaccine effectiveness to a certain extent. According to them the vaccine had excellent effectiveness.

It was told by Lisa Jackson, MD, MPH, an immunization researcher and senior investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle that the study was appealing but she was a little doubtful of the VE estimates.

“VE estimates are substantially higher than normally reported for seasonal flu vaccine in randomized studies conducted under much more controlled circumstances, so I'm a bit skeptical of those numbers. It is true, though, that AS03 is a very good adjuvant and so I don't doubt that such a vaccine could work", said Jackson.