The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has issued an update of the European Union (EU) recommendations for the influenza virus strains that vaccine manufacturers should include in vaccines for the prevention of seasonal influenza from autumn 2015.

The updated recommendation now also contains a decision on a suitable A/California/7/2009-like virus strain for live, attenuated vaccines. This was initially postponed due to the lack of sufficient data available on suitability and yield of possible candidate strains when the original recommendation was published on the EMA website on 27 March 2015.

Details, including the specific virus strains recommended, are available in the recommendation of the Biologics Working Party (BWP) ad-hoc Influenza Working Group.

For more details, go to: http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/news_and_events/news/2015/05/news_detail_002339.jsp&mid=WC0b01ac058004d5c1