Flu Vaccine and Vaccination Recommendations for Flu Season 2024–2025

Vaccines for Flu Season 2024–2025: Updated Influenza A Strain 

Aside from this, one of the Influenza A virus components in 2024–2025 flu season vaccines has been updated to a new Influenza A(H3N2) virus.

Each season, flu vaccines are updated to create a match with flu strains that are anticipated to circulate. Having a good match between components in flu vaccines and circulating flu viruses allows flu vaccines to work better in protecting our health against the flu. In the 2023–2024 flu season, flu vaccines were 41% to 44% in preventing hospitalizations due to the flu in adults, and 52% to 61% effective in preventing flu-related hospitalizations in children.

Vaccination for Flu Season 2024–2025: New Recommendations for Solid Organ Transplant Recipients 

As noted earlier, the ACIP and CDC continue to recommend flu vaccines for all people aged 6 months and older, with few exceptions. Flu vaccine recommendations for people are based in part on their age, as well as their health status and any allergies they may have to flu vaccines or their components.

This flu season, the ACIP is making an exception to their age-based recommendations for one particular group: People aged 18 through 64 years who have had a solid organ transplant and are on an immunosuppressive medication.

Here’s some background on why this exception is being made.

People who have received a solid organ transplant take medications that suppress their immune system to be able to maintain their transplanted organs. Because they are immunocompromised, they are at higher risk of developing severe complications from the flu.

Researchers have studied higher dose and adjuvanted flu vaccines in solid organ transplant recipients to see whether these types of vaccines might help create a stronger immune response to the antigens contained in the vaccine. Their studies showed that these vaccines didn’t show any difference in protecting these transplantation patients from flu-related hospitalization. However, there was evidence that of potentially improved immunogenicity, which describes the vaccines’ ability to create an immune response in the patients.

The updated flu vaccine recommendations for the flu season in 2024–2025 reflect these studies’ findings. Starting this flu season, the ACIP recommends that solid organ transplant recipients aged 18 to 64 years who take immunosuppressive medications may receive either a high-dose inactivated flu vaccine or an adjuvanted inactivated flu vaccine. Both of these vaccines may create a potentially improved immune response compared to standard flu vaccines.

In making this update to its recommendations, the ACIP does not express a preference between these vaccines and any other age-appropriate flu vaccines for solid organ transplant recipients.

Regardless of your health status or age, the flu vaccine remains the best way to protect yourself from the flu and serious complications from it. Be prepared for the coming flu season by getting a flu vaccine. If you have any questions or concerns about it, talk to your doctor and learn more about flu vaccination.

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