Considering the development of new influenza vaccines, some fundamental questions need to be addressed, some of which are listed below: 1) What antigen-specific and cross-reactive immunological responses should they minimally induce? 2) What type of clinical studies (field-, artificial challenge- and serological studies) would be required to prove the new vaccine's efficacy and/or its superiority to the existing influenza vaccines? 3) Which .. parameters in serological and/or efficacy studies are the most appropriate markers to assess vaccine efficacy? 4) What criteria could be used as relevant yardsticks to make a final assessment of a new influenza vaccine? These and similar methodological questions were the rationale behind the work presented in this thesis. For competitive reasons, the strategic consequences of this work for future influenza vaccine development are not discussed. Some proposals, however, are presented to define internationally accepted consensus criteria to quantitatively evaluate serological influenza vaccination studies. Obviously, the studies presented in this thesis could only be accomplished by the efforts of literally hundreds of people, such as the study participants, the investigators, co-authors, own and consultant statisticians, members of Duphar's influenza project group, laboratory technicians, secretaries, data-handlers, library staff, editor, Duphar's European National Organisations, colleagues at the Clinical Research Department, the Department of Biotechnology, the International Medical Department, the Adverse Drug Reaction Unit the Department of Information Management and, last but not least, the Department of Virology of the Erasmus University. I am grateful to all these people for their contribution to the work contained in this thesis.

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R. van Strik (Roel) , N. Masurel (Nic)
Erasmus University Rotterdam
hdl.handle.net/1765/40852
Erasmus MC: University Medical Center Rotterdam

Palache, A. (1991, November 27). Influenza vaccination : the effect of dose and age on the antibody response : a methodological evaluation of serological vaccination studies.. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/40852