Effect of obesity in children on the response to influenza virus vaccination (639.6)

Obesity is a global health concern and more than one-third of the adult population in the United States is obese. Childhood obesity is also on the rise, with obesity rates doubling in children over the past 30 years and tripling in adolescents. Obese adults are at greater risk for increased severity of infections with influenza virus and obesity has recently been found to be an independent risk factor for increased morbidity and mortality from influenza infection. Vaccination with influenza virus vaccine is the best method to protect from or lessen infection with influenza. However, studies in our laboratory have demonstrated that obese adults, when compared with healthy weight adults, have a suboptimal response to influenza vaccination. To expand our findings to children, we enrolled children, ages 2-17 with a range of BMI percentiles to study the effect of weight status on the response to influenza vaccination. We collected a pre-vaccination blood sample, and 30 days later, a post-vaccination blood samp...