Browsing by Author "Lang, Pierre-Olivier"

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    Effectiveness of influenza vaccine in aging and older adults: comprehensive analysis of the evidence
    (Dove Medical Press, 2012-02-23T00:00:00Z) Lang, Pierre-Olivier; Mendes, Aline; Socquet, Jennifer; Assir, Noémie; Govind, Sheila; Aspinall, Richard
    Foremost amongst the diseases preventable by vaccination is influenza. Worldwide, influenza virus infection is associated with serious adverse events leading to hospitalization, debilitating complications, and death in elderly individuals. Immunization is considered to be the cornerstone for preventing these adverse health outcomes, and vaccination programs are timed to optimize protection during the annual influenza season. Trivalent inactivated influenza virus vaccines are believed to be both effective and cost-saving; however, in spite of widespread influenza vaccination programs, rates of hospitalization for acute respiratory illness and cardiovascular diseases have been increasing in this population during recent annual influenza seasons. From meta-analyses summarizing estimates of influenza vaccine effectiveness from available observational clinical studies, this review aims to examine how effective current influenza vaccine strategies are in the aging and older adult population and to analyze which are the most important biases that interfere with measurements of influenza vaccine effectiveness. Furthermore, consideration is given to strategies that should be adopted in order to optimize influenza vaccine effectiveness in the face of immune exhaustion.
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    Immunotherapy of immunosenesence; who, how and when?
    (Bentham open, 2012-12-31T00:00:00Z) Govind, Sheila; Lapenna, Antonio; Lang, Pierre-Olivier; Aspinall, Richard
    Major changes in social welfare, economic conditions and medical knowledge over the last 60 years have pro-duced a demographic shift in the population. More individuals are living longer, and in a decade there will be more people over 65 than infants under 5 for the first time in history. Taking the analysis beyond mere numbers reveals that older indi-viduals are now physically more active than their forebears and travel more widely. This provides a greater opportunity for encountering infectious agents which could present a considerable problem. Older individuals are more susceptible to infection and do not respond as well as younger people to vaccination because of an age related decline in immunity, a state which has been termed immunosenesence. This decline is not uniform and some older individuals show a greater de-cline in their immune response than others. In this review we have sought to consider who are the ‘at risk' individuals, how they might best be treated and when.