Flu Shots: Divide and Conquer

Watching a child bawl through a flu vaccine is tough for any parent, and it didn't help when the Centers for Disease Control recommended earlier this year that all children from 6 months to 23 months get vaccinated for the flu not once but twice within one month to ensure the most robust immune response. So doctors at Duke University launched a study to determine whether spacing the shots out might save toddlers and their parents some agony — while still protecting children from the flu. The good news: kids inoculated in the spring and again six months later with the same flu strain were as well protected as those immunized twice in close succession. The bad news: doctors don't know if that will hold true if the vaccine strains change — as they often do — from year to year.