Children needed for Australian swine flu vaccine trial

A second stage of the swine flu vaccine trial, which began last week, will test the vaccine on children.

The child vaccine is similar to the adult one and two types of dose strengths and amounts will be tested in order to determine the correct dosage and the safety of the vaccine - it will be tested on children aged between six months and eight years in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane.

This second stage is being conducted by Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the University of Melbourne, who have put out a nationwide call for 400 children to take part in the vaccine trial.

The trial currently underway is testing a new swine flu vaccine developed by CSL on 100 adults in Adelaide.

The vaccine is similar to the one being used to treat seasonal flu but adapted to the swine flu virus and Professor Terry Nolan, of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute says the trial is very important to the Australian Government in its decision on how the vaccine will be used in children, given young people have been the most commonly affected by the virus.

The Head of the Paediatric Trials Unit at the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital, Helen Marshall, says the child vaccine will be important in the fight against the virus as children not only frequently become infected but also spread or transmit the infection to other people such as the elderly.

To date swine flu has been implicated in 50 deaths across Australia and more than 17,000 people have been infected with the H1N1 influenza strain.

Professor Nolan says the Therapeutic Goods Administration(TGA) requires the vaccine be tested before it is made available by the end of the year, he says more children than the elderly have been affected by the virus because it is a new virus - as few as 4% of cases have been in people over the age of 60 probably because people born more than 60 years ago have been exposed to a virus that was circulating at the time that was quite similar to this virus.

A woman in her 80s who had swine flu has died in the Townsville Hospital in north Queensland and is the 7th swine flu related death in the state.

A total of 98 people in Queensland are in hospital with the virus and 27 of those are in intensive care.